A Radio with Guts
A Radio with Guts - meaning Summary
Destructive Domestic Ritual
The poem recounts a recurring, self-destructive ritual: the narrator gets drunk, throws a radio through a window, and marvels that it continues to play from the roof while he replaces the glass each morning. The repeated act blends violence, stubborn attachment, and a kind of crude wonder. The closing image of the neighbor gardening, observed erotically from the window, links the narrator’s destructive impulse to longing and ordinary domestic desire.
Read Complete AnalysesIt was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk and throw the radio through the window while it was playing, and, of course, it would break the glass in the window and the radio would sit there on the roof still playing and I'd tell my woman, "Ah, what a marvelous radio!". The next morning I'd take the window off the hinges and carry it down the street to the glass man who would put in another pane. I kept throwing that radio through the window each time I got drunk and it would sit there on the roof still playing- a magic radio a radio with guts, and each morning I'd take the window back to the glass man. I don't remember how it ended exactly though I do remember we finally moved out. There was a woman downstairs who worked in the garden in her bathing suit, she really dug with that trowel and she put her behind up in the air and I used to sit in the window and watch the sun shine all over that thing while the music played.
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