Journeyman — Summary

Dave BontaCheerful

in the atelier of the mouth I serve the ear

it shall ring for some time to come

and me dancing with any little trouble

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The title sets up the whole poem. A journeyman is someone who has learned a trade but isn't yet a master, and here the trade seems to be speaking, or perhaps poetry itself. The speaker pictures the mouth as a workshop, an "atelier," and sees himself as a worker there whose job is to serve the ear. That makes language a kind of product: made by the mouth, delivered to a listener.

The second stanza turns to what the work leaves behind. Words "ring" and keep sounding "for some time to come," like a struck bell. The last lines are looser and harder to pin down. The speaker seems to say he will go on "dancing" through his work with hardly any difficulty, or perhaps that he faces trouble lightly. The grammar is a little off, and that fits the mood.

Overall the tone is modest but pleased. The speaker doesn't boast, yet he takes quiet joy in making sound and in the lingering echo of what he says.

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