The Last Laugh -- Wilfred Owen

Guest poem submitted by Martin Davis:

It suddenly occurred to me that the Minstrels' collection of Wilfred Owen
poems doesn't include this one, which ties in with the unusual perspectives
on warfare theme:

(Poem #1037) The Last Laugh 'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died. Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed, The Bullets chirped - 'In vain! vain! vain!' Machine-guns chuckled, 'Tut-tut! Tut-tut!' And the Big Gun guffawed. Another sighed, - 'O Mother, Mother! Dad!' Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead. And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud Leisurely gestured, - 'Fool!' And the falling splinters tittered. 'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood, Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud. And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned; Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned; And the Gas hissed. -- Wilfred Owen

I'm surprised that this poem isn't more anthologised.  I've always had an
enormous respect for Owen's poetry, and yet only came across this one a
couple of years ago.

If you were looking for examples of alliteration, assonance, onomatopeia and
personification that might catch the interest of a class of disaffected
teenagers, you'd have trouble finding a better poem.  Read it out loud and
you can practically smell the mud in the crater you've just dived into.  But
for me, the poem's unique power and anger is in its vivid depiction of warm,
illogical, emotional humanity being slaughtered by the machines.

Martin.

[Minstrels Links]

Wilfred Owen:
Poem #132, Dulce Et Decorum Est
Poem #232, Insensibility
Poem #288, Futility
Poem #321, Strange Meeting
Poem #979, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

This week's theme:
Poem #1033, What the Bullet Sang -- Bret Harte
Poem #1034, Pigtail -- Tadeusz Ròzewicz
Poem #1035, The Hand that Signed the Paper -- Dylan Thomas
Poem #1036, Range Finding -- Robert Frost
Poem #1037, The Last Laugh -- Wilfred Owen

Range Finding -- Robert Frost

(Poem #1036) Range Finding The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung. On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew. -- Robert Frost

The UTEL site has the following note on the poem:
  Frost saved this poem only because Edward Thomas, his friend the English
  poet and the E. T. of the title, "thought it so good a description of No
  Man's Land" (Selected Letters of Robert Frost, ed. Lawrance Thompson [New
  York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964], p. 220).

I agree - Frost's particular genius for capturing the *feel* of a place with
a few small but precisely chosen details is very much in evidence here, and
make this a poem well worth preserving.

Reading the poem, I was drawn towards a more literal interpretation of the
phrase "No Man's Land" - this is, indeed, no *Man's* land that Frost
describes, and the bullets are a savage intrusion of his presence into a
realm which holds no place for him. With only the lightest sprinkling of
adjectives, Frost manages to convey an air of pristine tranquility, a bubble
at once fragile and adaptable, and with a strong sense of the microcosmic
that throws it into sharp focus and makes the battle recede, blurry and
nigh-unseen, around its edges.

Of particular note is the word 'sullenly' in the last line. Not only does it
provide a powerfully evocative image with which to wrap the poem up, but, by
its very unexpectedness, forces the reader to first anthropomorphize the
spider, and then, by extension, to go back and do the same for the
participants in the octet's tableau. It seems (although this is reaching
slightly) almost as if the reader is being invited to draw the analogy with
the human noncombatants whose lives are moved in various directions by the
passing war. Again, my personal feeling is that Frost is most rewarding
when the *surface* meaning of his poems is seen as their main focus, so I'll
leave the minute exploration of their hidden depths to others.

-martin

Links:

An extensive biography (and criticism) of Frost is appended to Poem #51

Some notes on the poem:
  http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/frost1.html

The current theme:
  Poem #1033, Bret Harte, "What the Bullet sang"
  Poem #1034, Tadeusz Ròzewicz, "Pigtail"
  Poem #1035, Dylan Thomas, "The Hand That Signed The Paper"

Robert Frost poems on Minstrels:
  Poem #51, "The Road Not Taken"
  Poem #170, "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things"
  Poem #155, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
  Poem #336, "A Patch of Old Snow"
  Poem #681, "The Secret Sits"
  Poem #730, "Mending Wall"
  Poem #779, "Fire and Ice"
  Poem #917, "A Considerable Speck"
  Poem #985, "Once by the Pacific"
  Poem #994, "The Gift Outright"
  Poem #1012, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

(Poem #336, I think, comes closest in feel to today's.)

The Hand That Signed The Paper -- Dylan Thomas

Carrying on with the theme:

(Poem #1035) The Hand That Signed The Paper The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death. The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder, The finger joints are cramped with chalk; A goose's quill has put an end to murder That put an end to talk. The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever, And famine grew, and locusts came; Great is the hand that holds dominion over Man by a scribbled name. The five kings count the dead but do not soften The crusted wound nor pat the brow; A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven; Hands have no tears to flow. -- Dylan Thomas

 From "Twenty Five Poems", 1936.

 I've always liked the density of Dylan Thomas' work. His early and
middle-period poems are wonderfully impenetrable masses of high-flown
rhetoric: pretentious, perhaps, in their almost wilful obfuscation, but also
possessed of an undeniable power [1]. His later poems are air and fire to
his original earth and water; while equally dense in their use of allusion
and illusion, they trip lightly off the tongue, beguiling the senses while
stirring the heart [2].

 Unfortunately, today's poem falls in neither category, and I have to
confess that it's not one of my favourites. There are occasions when
simplicity is power, but there are also times when it betokens, well, a lack
of depth. There's nothing _technically_ wrong with "The Hand That Signed The
Paper"; the basic conceit is well thought of and well executed (if not
terribly original); the verse is straightforward and competent. But it
remains just that - verse: great poetry it isn't.

Or is that just me?

thomas.

[1] The "Altarwise by Owl-light" sonnet sequence is a stunning example: I
love the poems, but I haven't the faintest idea what they mean. See
Poem #405 on the Minstrels website.

[2] "Fern Hill", "Poem in October" and "After the Funeral" come to mind.

[Minstrels Links]

Dylan Thomas:
Poem #14, Prologue
Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Poem #58, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Poem #138, Fern Hill
Poem #225, Poem In October
Poem #270, Under Milk Wood
Poem #335, After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones)
Poem #405, Altarwise by Owl-Light (Stanzas I - IV)
Poem #476, In my craft or sullen art
Poem #568, Especially when the October Wind

Pigtail -- Tadeusz Ròzewicz

Guest poem sent in by Hemant R. Mohapatra

(Poem #1034) Pigtail When all the women in the transport had their heads shaved four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs swept up and gathered up the hair Behind clean glass the stiff hair lies of those suffocated in gas chambers there are pins and side combs in this hair The hair is not shot through with light is not parted by the breeze is not touched by any hand or rain or lips In huge chests clouds of dry hair of those suffocated and a faded plait a pigtail with a ribbon pulled at school by naughty boys. -- Tadeusz Ròzewicz

       The Museum, Auschwitz, 1948
        (translated by Adam Czerniawski)

I have rarely come across a poem that has touched me as closely as the one
above. The horrendous vividity in which death has been depicted leaves you
gasping for breath. At a first glance, the poet seems to be just a mute
onlooker of the tragedy - one who has the maturity to see those bits of
pins and ribbons in the dry hair of the dead bodies but not the courage to
do anything about it. Slowly, the poem sinks into your system and you
realize that a poem of this depth just cannot be penned down without the
poet having gone though it him/herself. The last few tender lines leave
the reader with a sense of utter sadness. The poet seems to have
deliberately ended the poem at a point where the reader was just beginning
to connect to it (perhaps) to deny the readers the right to prod more into
the lives of the victims. Was he remorseful? Or angry?  I would have
called it a deliciously bitter end had it not been such a respectfully sad
one!! Sometimes I wish we had a way of giving some poems a standing
applause on emails.

Hemant

Links:
  Some more of Rozewicz's poems:
    [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/Paris/6170/poetfeat2.html

  The current theme: Unusual perspectives on war
    Poem #1033, Bret Harte, "What the Bullet Sang"

Biography:

Tadeusz Rozewicz (1921- ) is a well-respected Polish poet, playwright, and
novelist known for his "naked poetry." Rozewicz served in World War II
with the underground Home Army. Following the war, he became an
influential poet, much revered by later generations of Polish writers. His
work has focused on several major themes, including the question of
whether art is even possible after the horrors of World War II.

What the Bullet sang -- Bret Harte

This week's theme - war poems with unusual perspectives

(Poem #1033) What the Bullet sang O Joy of creation, To be! O rapture, to fly And be free! Be the battle lost or won, Though its smoke shall hide the sun, I shall find my love -- the one Born for me! I shall know him where he stands All alone, With the power in his hands Not o'erthrown; I shall know him by his face, By his godlike front and grace; I shall hold him for a space All my own! It is he -- O my love! So bold! It is I -- all thy love Foretold! It is I -- O love, what bliss! Dost thou answer to my kiss? O sweetheart! what is this Lieth there so cold? -- Bret Harte

          (1839-1902)

What first attracted me to today's poem was its striking originality - both
the first person voice from bullet's point of view, and the casting of the
narrative as a tragic love poem. Indeed, insofar as concept and content can
be separated, the former is definitely the predominant note in today's poem.
The actual execution, however, lacks the passion that the poet's theme seems
to call for, so that despite an interesting verse structure and some nice
imagery, all that I am left with at the end is the idea itself.

Even so, this is definitely a noteworthy poem, and prompts this week's theme
- a series of poems with unusual perspectives on war. I'm not going to try
and define exactly what I mean by 'unusual', but if you know a poem that you
think would fit the theme, do send it in.

-martin

Links:
  Biography of Harte:
    http://www.bartleby.com/226/2110.html

  A nice companion piece to today's poem:
   http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/hardy8.html