http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14977
I was instantly drawn to this poem. The first thought I had was that it was similar to a found poem but with a found picture. It offered more poetic freedom as you can choose to describe the painting a certain way but it still gave me the ability to visualize what was happening in the photo.
"Flesh and blood turn mathematic." The most powerful line was the first. It is the only line that is not enjambed or has a caesura. I made it seem that this is the only thing that the poet is sure about and it is the most important thing about this picture. While it is the thing the author is sure about, it is also the most opinionated line in the poem. The poem is an illustration of how someone would usually view a photo. When you look at a picture for the first time, something catches your eye instantly, the main premise of the photograph which explains why the first line is not enjambed and powerful because that is the overall effect of the photo. Then after knowing the general idea of the photograph, you start to list the details. In the rest of the poem, the poet describes the photo in more of a continuous thought through the use of enjambment across every stanza and a caesura in almost every line. It causes the reader to continue to depict the photograph as the writer continues to view the photograph. The poem also uses a lot of technical photography terminology, but it also refers to the first line. A lot of the poem is technical versus emotional or "flesh and blood" versus "mathematic." While the war should evoke a lot of emotion of pain and torture, the poet decides to use very objective descriptions which allow the reader to make subjective interpretations. With the first line, you read the poem with some tug of emotion and even though he only uses observations in the rest of the poem, it is easy to see what he should be focusing on in the photograph- the flesh and blood instead of the mathematic.
The writing here is clear, and you identify early on the poem's central assertion about the mathematics of flesh and blood. However, while you make the good, formal observation that it is end-stopped, you don't offer an interpretation of the line--what, in fact, does it mean? How does it illuminate or relate to the rest of the poem? As for the middle of the poem, you say: "Then after knowing the general idea of the photograph, you start to list the details. In the rest of the poem, the poet describes the photo in more of a continuous thought through the use of enjambment across every stanza and a caesura in almost every line. It causes the reader to continue to depict the photograph as the writer continues to view the photograph. The poem also uses a lot of technical photography terminology, but it also refers to the first line. A lot of the poem is technical versus emotional or "flesh and blood" versus "mathematic." " Again, while there are some interesting formal observations here, much of this summary. I would have liked to see you struggle a bit more with the language of the poem, with the ideas, with what the poem is suggesting about war, our represtation of it, about photography. And then there's the ending--what do you make of those "maybes"?
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