A Close Reading of Erin Belieu's Poem "In Airports"
"All rows now boarding for this non-stop flight to The Waste Land!"
As I began to write this, on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, a vast number of people who had sallied forth to spend this extra-long weekend with their loved ones were in the process of making their way home. Many of them were sitting in traffic on an interstate; others were hurtling through the dark (or darkening) skies on commercial airliners. Still others sat in airports awaiting the announcement that it is time to board their flight (or dreading the announcement that a further delay was in effect.)
For a few years in my 20s, I was one of the people who would make those announcements, at least for passengers traveling out of Boston’s Logan International Airport. From August 1998 to July 2001, I worked as a customer service agent for United Airlines, which means I spent a lot of time trying to help people get where they were going — or trying to help reunite them with their missing bags — all while wearing a very unflattering blue polyester uniform. I was on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol, very little of which was due to anything I had done, and I usually ended up working on the late shift (1700-0130 — a.k.a. 5:00pm - 1:30am) with midweek days off (usually Tuesday/Wednesday, sometimes Wednesday/Thursday) because I didn’t have enough seniority to bid for something better. (You can imagine my social life was a bit challenged by this schedule.)
Despite this, though, I still find myself fascinated by airports. They’re liminal spaces, filled with weird interactions between strangers and, therefore, incredible opportunities for people-watching. Modern airports have gotten to feel like malls, but instead of cinnamon pretzel and perfume smells, it’s Jet-A and anxiety that wafts through the concourse.
It’s in honor of all of those travelers that I picked Erin Belieu’s incredible, revelatory poem “In Airports” for a little close-reading. This poem first published in Narrative and can also found in her gorgeous collection Come-Hither Honeycomb. I took my copy of Come-Hither Honeycomb out for a drink the other night, and Erin’s wit and insight was an ideal match for a few glasses of rye and a perfect post-punk playlist.
Erin will be reading with Carl Phillips for What The Universe Is at 7:30pm Eastern on December 10, 2024. The reading will be on Zoom; register at bit.ly/WTUIDec2024 so you don’t miss it!
In Airports It was the season for weeping in airports for walking and bleeding in airports— the white corridors their rocking chairs the ghosts and trains and strangers all overcast the windows and buzzing of people and earbuds always the weather in airports a stranger season she never knew— It was the season for these and (what?) the lady said standing behind the long white counter and hives and sores what left their weeping nettled prints below her clothes red like the ghost of maple leaves raked wet from the sidewalk— It was the season of storm delays and lightning clocks of . . . shame and ghosts on trains hanging from the vinyl straps clinging to the stainless poles or buzzing in the long white rows of rocking chairs in airports— a stranger season she never knew what was gone and where and buzzing how it walked and wailing like a ghost . . . a shame was something the lady said standing behind the long white counter . . . a shame she said and looked concerned— She heard her (what?) a stranger said and never knew— it was always the weather in airports the season the weeping a wet buzzing sore she walked on board . . . a shame a lady gone— a stranger flew
As you might have guessed from my preamble, I take particular notice of poems set in airports. There are some really good ones out there, but for my money, Erin’s poem is the one that best captures the feel of being in an airport; the way the poem moves reminds me of the not-quite-regular thrum and bustle of those weird interstitial palaces of travel.
The opening stanza immediately hooks me: “It was the season for / weeping in airports for walking // and bleeding in airports—” manages to be simultaneously precise — someone is always weeping in every airport — and also feel disorienting. Which season is the season for weeping in airports? Every season. Inside the climate-controlled terminal of an airport, all seasons are the same.
During my time at United I was witness to a lot of weeping and some bleeding. Several moments in particular have stayed with me, even 25 years later.
There was the college student from Marin whose father had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage; she was desperate to get to San Francisco before he died, but airline schedules and the laws of physics meant that there was no way for that to happen. I’ve never been able to shake the memory of her, wracked with full-body sobs, standing at the gate podium while we checked her in and upgraded her to first class so she’d at least have a modicum of privacy during her 6 hours in airborne limbo.
There was the woman en route to her grandmother’s funeral in Cologne. She’d booked travel from Boston to Washington-Dulles on United, and from there would be on Lufthansa to Cologne. The problem was that the flight to Dulles canceled due to a mechanical issue, blowing all of the downline connections, including all of the European flights. As it was also one of the last scheduled flights out of Boston going anywhere, I had extraordinarily limited options for getting this customer to where she needed to be any time near when she needed to be there. The best I was able to do was book her on an Air Portugal flight to the Azores (literally the last flight out of Boston that night) and onward from there to Cologne. She was due to arrive at the airport an hour after her grandmother’s funeral started, which I knew was not ideal; my assessment was confirmed by the silent wash of tears down her otherwise stoic face.
As for the bleeding? Let’s just say that the airport is a challenging environment, one that requires a certain amount of physical risk. I won’t go into this more here. Forgive me this deliberate omission.
The syntax in this poem is extraordinary. If you’ve read much of Erin’s work, you already know that she is exquisite in her precision. This poem is no exception; it offers the experience of language accrued over time, with repeated words and phrases: seasons, ghosts, trains, buzzing, shame. All of these words circle back, like passengers killing time by walking in loops around the terminal. The fact that the lines of the poem are punctuated with white space — those open gaps between words that slow the reader down and interrupt the cognitive process of reading and understanding the line as a unit — might potentially distract the reader from noticing that almost the only grammatical punctuation in this poem are the em-dashes and ellipses; there’s not a single end-stopped line to be found, nor a comma. There’s a question mark in a repeated parenthetical aside, but as punctuation goes, it’s hardly a mark that makes a case for finality, being instead open to a response, though I don’t know that I’d characterize anything in this poem as responding directly to it.
Erin’s line breaks are also not what I’d consider predictable. Take, for example, this stanza:
the white corridors their rocking chairs the ghosts and trains and strangers all overcast the windows
Where a different (or lesser) poet might keep “rocking” and “chair” together on the same line in order to preserve “rocking chair” as a unified concept, Erin has instead bent that concept across the end of one line, enjambing it onto the next, and in doing so has altered our consciousness, putting us slightly off-kilter. The same effect occurs with the following line; is “all overcast” modifying “strangers” or is it the beginning of a new concept? This runs throughout the poem, with the repeated words reappearing in novel configurations, running into each other in ways that carry an echo of familiarity juxtaposed with the new.
There are also startling images:
It was the season for these and (what?) the lady said standing behind the long white counter and hives and sores what left their weeping nettled prints below her clothes red like the ghost of maple leaves raked wet from the sidewalk—
Notice how the familiar language (“It was the season”) gives way to that parenthetical interrogative from the lady “standing behind / the long white counter” and then shifts again to a line that begins with “and” — suggesting a continuation, an ongoing situation with “hives and sores,” though if it is ongoing, this is the first moment at which we, the readers, become privy to their existence.
After that moment the diction then shifts, and I love that Erin works a relative what into the poem, which in the context of the hives and sores and the “weeping nettled prints” gives the language an antiquated tone here, which amps up the strangeness factor in the poem. Who expects that in an airport? And who expects hives and sores to be compared to something as lush and lovely as “the ghost of maple / leaves raked wet from the sidewalk—”?
Not I. But there it is, and then the poem circles back again to “It was the season” and varies itself again, moving forward through slight shifts, reusing words and images from before in the way that anyone sitting in an airport will hear the same phrases recycled over and over again in that environment. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please: United Airlines flight 1525 with service to Denver is boarding now at gate C25. Or The moving walkway is nearing its end. Please watch your step. Or any number of other things.
Even with the words showing up again, recombining in new ways, Erin’s poem still moves forward, still brings its unsettling self to an eventual departure, “a lady gone— a stranger flew” (and I say departure rather than ending here, as there’s no final punctuation on the poem, and the movement of the line is clear: it’s up and away, not closed down.)
It’s an incredible piece of writing. I want you to hear more of Erin’s work, so get yourself registered for Tuesday, December 11 at bit.ly/WTUIDec2024. Don’t miss it!
What a remarkable poem and I thoroughly enjoyed your insight and analysis. I love the spacing between lines, which made me want to read the poem aloud and I couldn't help but notice how it reminded me of eavesdropping (unintentionally so) on conversations, so natural in airports, where all our lives criss cross like telephone wires.
I'm glad to have your insights into this piece. An airport can feel like such a sterile environment and one where we should suppress our humanity. I love the weeping, hives, and blood that make their way into this space in the poem.