Apollo

“Apollo” is a seven-stanza poem with four lines per stanza, with one final line ending the poem, separated into its own (eighth) stanza. The poem is written in free verse with no set rhyme scheme or meter. Most lines are short, between four and six syllables, with some longer lines reaching up to eight syllables. Told from the first-person point of view, in the present tense, the poem begins with an action (“We pull off” [Line 1]) setting the poem into motion. The first stanza sets the scene: A family, likely on a road trip, stops at “a road shack” (Line 2). They’re in Massachusetts, and they’ve stopped for a specific reason: “to watch men walk / on the moon” (Lines 4-5). The first stanza places the speakers in this roadside scene to set up what will become the poem’s argument.

Through short, clipped lines, Alexander’s lines are heavily enjambed. Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. In French, this word means “a striding over” and creates the feeling of suspension between lines, and often a feeling of surprise. An example of this is in Stanza 3 when the speaker describes how the men “bounce in and out / of craters” (Lines 9-10). Stanza 2 describes the “we” in the poem—possibly the children in the car—mimicking the astronauts on TV: “We did / the same thing” (Lines 5-6), the speaker describes, pretending to count down and blast off into space.

The third stanza opens with the movement of the men on the moon and an introduction of the first person speaker: “I want / a Coke and a hamburger” (Lines 11-12). The speaker, distracted or uninterested in the moon walk, turns to their own tangible wants (food, lunch).

A shift occurs in Stanza 4 with the word “Because” (Line 13). This word introduces a clause of cause and reason. “Because the men / are walking on the moon” (Lines 13-14) (this is the reason), “the road shack people don’t / notice we are a black / family not from there” (Lines 20-22) (this is the cause). Interwoven in this clause are details about the moon that the speaker observes. These details give the speaker a voice and establish their age. Because they believed the moon to be “green” (Line 16) and made of “cheese” (Line 16), the speaker is likely a child. The poem acts as a sort of coming-of-age poem, shattering the speaker’s previous beliefs (“the way I’d thought” [Line 19]).

The final stanzas of the poem turn from the moonwalk to the question of race. The family is Black and “not from there” (Line 22). However, the men on TV are doing a strange, unthinkable thing. They are “talking through / static” (Lines 24-25) and “[bouncing] in space- / boots, tethered / to cords” (Lines 25-27). This poem takes place in 1969, when humans walked on the moon for the first time, so this action of walking and existing in space is extremely new and uncommon. The speaker uses this example to make their final argument that the moonwalking men are “much / stranger, stranger / even than we are” (Lines 27-29).

The poem ends on the note of racism. Alexander, who wrote this poem from the perspective of a child in the present-day late 1960s, following the Civil Rights movement, makes a bold claim in the final line. That this family at this road shack in Massachusetts is considered an outsider solely because of their skin color. However, the poem also displays a moment of unity as the road shack people and the Black family watch the American achievement of a moon walk and landing together.