Aubade on East 12th Street by August Kleinzahler

     August Kleinzahler is an American Poet born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on December 10th, 1949 and is 64 years of age. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Victoria, he has won a number of awards including the Berlin Prize in 2000.

The skylight silvers
and a faint shudder from the underground
travels up the building's steel.

Dawn breaks across this wilderness
of roofs with their old wooden storage tanks
and caps of louvered cowlings

moving in the wind. Your back,
raised hip and thigh
well-tooled as a rounded baluster

on a lathe of shadow and light.

     In this poem we see the context of the story outlined in the beauty of both nature and the city. As we can see it is addressed as such by August Kleinzahler. In my opinion the context of knowing that he is comparing nature and a city is key, because it opens our minds to the idea that the author appreciates the beauty of nature just as much as he appreciates the beauty of a city. We can see it is a city, because Kleinzahler states, "...a faint shudder from the underground travels up the building's steel", referring to the skyscrapers in a city. The idea of the city being as free as nature is the main guiding force for what August has in mind. He is approaching the beauty of nature and is doing this by coming to us on terms that we would understand: a city. The context of the poem shows his thoughts on how both are always changing and becoming more diverse we also see that he thinks of these places as gathering areas for light, since light symbolizes hope and people and animals are drawn to it. The setting of this poem is the main contextual evidence, since there is no dialogue and characters to draw off of. Through the setting August Kleinzahler also shows how wild and untamed nature and the city are. Even when the city is full of technology and change it still remains a place of hustle and bustle just as nature and the environment does.