Carolyn Forche, “The Colonel”
I choose this poem because it was very odd. They catch us in the poem with the first sentence saying, “What you have heard is true” (Forche). She makes us wonder, “What have we hear?” “Why is it important?” Forche goes on to talk about how they’re like everyday people; watching TV, reading the paper, and their daughter filing her nails; normal activities, normal people. Then all of a sudden the Colonel comes back to the dinner table with a sack and, to everyone’s surprise, the sack was filled with ears. When the Colonel takes one of the ears and drops it in the water glass Forche says, “It comes alive there” (Forche). Like the ear could hear everything and sense what the Colonel was doing, even after it was sliced off of someone’s head. After that the Colonel has a breakdown and rants about how “your people can go f--- themselves” (Forche). It sounds like the Colonel might have post-traumatic stress disorder and can’t really help his crazy rants. It might just have to be something they have to live with.
Kevin Powers, “ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting”
I choose this poem because it was short, but had a lot of meaning. When Powers first says, “I tell her I Love her like not killing and ten minutes of sleep” (Powers), I believe it means, he doesn’t want to kill people, but doesn’t really have a choice and where he is now is so busy and stressful he’s lucky if he gets ten minutes of sleep. He goes on to say how he will smell when his Love opens the door. Meaning he’ll be so exhausted with no showers or soap or cologne or sleep to greet her after their overdue meeting. My favorite part of the poem is at the end when Powers tells us what Private Bartle says, “War is just little pieces of metal passing through each other.” They’re out there fighting for their lives and everyone else’s and they don’t even really know why; they don’t see the point at all. Why do we need to have little pieces of metal hit someone to make peace? Why does it have to be that complicated? There should be no need for this.
I think you did a good job analyzing these two poems. You raised several ideas that I had not even thought of. Such as in the Colonel when you stated that his outbursts could be caused by PTSD, I was just thinking that he was a leader in some third world country and fear was how he kept his power. As for your question of why does war have to be so complicated, I think he was trying to simplify combat, not to complicate it. Thanks for the new point of view.
ReplyDeleteRach, I love how you completely think out of the box. I would of never thought of some of the ideas that you came up with like the comment above me. I always have another perspecive of the poem, whenever I read your analysis. I agree with the first poem that he may have some ptsd and cant help it. That was one of the first things that came to my mind as well. I thought about that poem for awhile somewhat thinking "what the heck?" but its starting to make more sense now!
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