Happy as a Clam - some thoughts on "Clam Ode" by Dean Young

            At first glance Dean Young’s “Clam Ode” seems to tell a tale of a man’s obsession with shellfish. However, with closer analysis, the poem turns into something much deeper. The reader is taken on an adventure, getting bounced around through different memories and situations, on Young’s path to find happiness. Young is on a quest to find happiness and finds his answer in an unexpected place, a clam. In his poem “Clam Ode”, Dean Young uses the image of the clam to represent the human qualities of patience and calmness and is the central theme to his path to happiness.

The poem begins with a sad tone, touching upon the struggles of life. Young introduces the reader to his journey to find happiness with, “one attempts to be significant on a grand scale / in the knock-down battle of life / but settles” (1-3). The use of the word “settles” has more than one meaning here. The more obvious of the two uses of the word is that Young has settled with his current situation but feels unhappy with his choices. The word “settles” also ties into the recurring image of a clam that Young keeps going back too. The word is slipped in create to the image of an object settling to the bottom of the ocean, where the clam lives. Clams settle at the bottom of the ocean, and as Young is settling, or sinking to the bottom of the ocean, he is symbolically beginning his learning process. Young is saying that sometimes people try to be amazing and rise above the rest, but end up settling for something more average. It seems that Young is giving the reader some personal insight into his life leading up to this point. Is Young the “one” he is referring to here? Happiness is not something that can be achieved by working towards being significant. Instead, as Young discovers, happiness comes more easily when being like the clam and remaining calm in hard situations.

After Young’s self-reflection, he begins to think about “the expression ‘happy as a clam,’” and “how it imparts buoyant emotion / to a rather, when you get down to it, / nonexpressive creature” (5-8). In other words, the famous expression conveys a cheerful emotion to an actually completely nonexpressive animal. Young utilizes an interesting word choice in this section, particularly the use of the word “buoyant.” This is the second example of Young using a word that adds to the image of the ocean. This word ties in with the next lines because it puts the image of floating into the reader’s mind, much the way Young describes the way clams calmly float in the ocean.

Young goes on to criticize the unexpressive nature of the clam, writing “in piles of ice / it awaits its doom pretty much the same / as in the ocean’s floor it awaits / life’s banquet and sexual joys” (4-10). First of all, the fact that Young is portraying the animal that has become a role model for him is interesting. He describes clams as if they are the same in life as they are in death. Interestingly, it seems the more he thinks about what clams do all day, float around and calmly wait for everything to come to them, the more he realizes that the clam can offer something to be learned. Clams are naturally unexpressive creatures that literally just go with the flow and wait for whatever is given to them. People have a hard time relaxing and waiting for life, instead they rush things and potentially ruin them. Young makes it seem that clams have mastered the ability to be patient and wait for happiness to come to them.

Young talks about how emotions are confusing and can keep us from happiness. Young explains that “states of feeling, unlike states of the upper Midwest, / are difficult to name” (24-5) and that “people have had more feelings than they know what to do with” (29). The clam however, does not have to deal with a slew of confusing and contradicting emotions. Young is not arguing that people need to feel less in order to be happy, but rather that people should try to remain calm when feeling overwhelmed by their different feelings and slowly sort through them. This section is interesting because it seems as if Young is starting to learn from the clam, the animal that he described as emotionless earlier.

Young has linked the clam with the sense of calmness and is now using the idea of the calm clam as a strategy to remain calm and try to control the “slue of feelings” (27). The use of the verb “slue” gives the words a harsher feeling. To slue is to slide violently or uncontrollably. Young continues this theme of violence and uncontrollability in the next lines, writing “like fire extinguisher that turns out to be a flamethrower” (31). Young is expressing his need for a solution, something to put out the fire in his head, to extinguish all of the confusing and conflicting emotions running amuck. Unfortunately, all he is finding are flamethrowers, things that are only multiplying the problem. The images of fire used in this part of the poem are almost opposite the opening images of a gentle sea. The word choice implies that Young feels that he is losing control of his emotions, which explains why he has sought refuge in such an unexpressive and emotionless animal.

Young finds hope when he gazes upon this clam because it has the ability to stay calm in any situation. Young says, “The clam however remains calm. / Green is the color of the kelp it rests on” (37-8). The color green is of great importance in this line. In psychology, the color green has ties to balance and harmony, specifically in regards to emotions. Another characteristic commonly associated with the color green is growth. The image that Young has painted us, specifically using green, combines the concepts of growth and a balance of emotions. This is exactly what Young has been searching for. What is resting upon the green? A clam. This is another example of how Dean Young uses the image of the clam to represent the ability to be calm, something that he is trying so to be able to do.

The next line in the poem continues to describe the clam resting on the green kelp, sharing with the reader that it is” having a helluva wingding calm” (39). This line presents the reader with a bit of an oxymoron. The word “wingding” is usually used to describe something that is lively and wild. To describe the clam’s calmness as wild leaves the reader with a contradiction. Did Young use this contradiction to express that fact that he is still searching for the ability to be calm?

At the end of the poem we find Young sitting at a table preparing to eat the animal that he has talked so much about. Young waits until the last lines of the poem to explain to the reader how this journey began. His clam dinner has been the inspiration of all of this soul searching. “Join yourself to me through the emissary / of this al dente fettuccini,” Young implores, “so I may be qualmless and happy as you” (Young 42-5). In these final lines Young is asking for the strength to be as calm as the clam. The word “emissary” has ties to something on a mission, much like Young is on a mission to find the strength to remain calm. The pasta that Young is about to eat is also on a mission to send him the clam. The clam in his meal is a representation of calmness, as Young has set up throughout the poem. It is very symbolic that the clam is about to enter Young’s body. The act of eating the clam represent that Young is about to gain the ability that he has given to the clam; being calm.

Works Cited

            Young, Dean. "Clam Ode." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5. John Schilb, John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 863-864. Print.