Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae: In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Hey, guess who's back? I'm returning to 3BPoetryThoughts to finish the last 3 posts I never got around to 1) because poetry's important and 2) I need to warm up for NaNoWriMo in July and although I saw 642 Things to Write About in Urban Outfitters the other day, I was too cheap to buy it.

This, in case you didn't know, is the poem that inspires the Veterans of Foreign Wars to give you red poppies when you donate, and many countries around the world to use red poppies on their various Remembrance/Memorial Days. I first read this poem/made a poppy at Empire Girl's State when I went summer after my junior year, and I now have a red poppy living on my purse after donating to the VFW ladies at the local Farmer's Market on Saturday. They were very pleasant, and said, "Oh look, we've got a brain over here!" when I mentioned I went to RIT (I had my Imagine RIT Volunteer shirt on, which they asked about).

Memorial Day was also this past Monday. Both of my Grandfathers served in the military; on my mother's side her father was a veteran of the Korean War, although I never met him and she barely knew him at all (he died when she was 9) and my paternal grandfather didn't specifically serve in any wars but was a Green Beret Paratrooper and toured as a sharp shooter with the military afterwards. He died, what, five years ago now? Maybe 6. Given my stats with Left 4 Dead 2 I clearly did not inherit any of his sharpshooting ability.

In regards to the poem I guess the overwhelming feeling it emanates is legacy. The people in the poem are the Dead, yet part of them remains 1) in the poppies that have spouted up where they are buried (the author John McCrae had to personally bury one of his best friends shortly before he wrote the poem) 2) their spirit, previously very alive as described in the second stanza and 3) their cause, which their comrades must take up after them. And not to mention John Green again (spoiler alert, I only have two posts after this one, but he's gonna come up again) but An Abundance of Katherines, which Adam is reading now, is partially about whether or not we create something that lasts forever, and The Fault in Our Stars likewise deals with the impact we have after death. Having read both of those and, well, just living, it's obvious that not everyone will make the kind of impact that will be remembered centuries onward. I'm almost done reading Don Quixote at the moment, and part of me wonders if Cervantes actually knew that people would be reading his stories for ages to come, because Cervantes was extremely meta and does mention at numerous points that Don Quixote will live throughout history. An Abundance of Katherines reaches the previous conclusion and decides it's ok, and that living your life beholden to making an impact to be remembered for times to come is not a fulfilling way to live your life. Living life the way you want to, doing what makes you passionate, and positively affecting those around you is the fulfilling way to live your life. If you manage to create something powerful enough to live on after you by doing this, all the better.

That being said, I think those who are put through the perils of war and make the kinds of sacrifices that war requires deserve the kind of legacy this poem resonates. It's rumored that McCrae tried to throw this poem away but his colleagues saved it and made him publish it, and I'm glad they did so. Veterans deserve some way to continue to live on, even if it's through a small red flower. McCrae's simple poem, written probably out of his grief, is a very good memorial not only to the soldiers he fought with in WWI, but all soldiers before and after as well. Once again, poetry's important.

Happy belated Memorial Day everybody.
-Val

Dulce Et Decorum Est ~ Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


This is another poem that I found thanks to a class, and I am quite thankful for that. Wilfred Owen was a sad story. He spent his early life in school to become a poet, and he met quite a few professionals who enjoyed his poetry. Unfortunately he was in college at just the wrong time to be drafted into WWI. He fought the war while still writing poetry and sending them back to his family, who compiled them into a book for him. He died in the war, one week before the armistice was signed. A large amount of his poetry gives vivid descriptions of the war and of the death and destruction therein. I won't write too much about this poem, as it does a fairly good job speaking for itself. I will say this though, if you can read this, and still feel that war is a good option, you should read it again, and again, and again. Read it so many times that you close your eyes and can see the frothing figure on the cart, writhing in agony, and slowly dying from the inside out. Then tell me war is a good option.

Signing off ~ Sam Zimmerman

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner - Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell - 1945


If anyone who was in AP Literature at NKHS is reading this, I hope you connected this to Catch-22 like I did. For those who haven't read it, Catch-22 features a character who was blown to pieces in the back of a plane (Snowden).

Back to the poem, it took me a while to actually figure out a lot of the double (quadruple?) meaning behind this poem the first time I read it. The four interpretations I got out of it were as follows:

1: Man's mother dies, he enlists in the army, he's in a battle in a plane and gets shot

2: The "mother" is the main part of the plane, and he was forced into the turret where he was shot

3: Mother dies at childbirth and man gets sent to an orphanage. From there his life is completely controlled by the state, where he spends his meaningless life until he dies.

4: The entire poem is about his birth, where "mother's sleep" is conception, "woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters" is the chaos of the real world, and (he might have died in birth, or his birth was his death) he was forced out with a steam hose (a common practice in 1945).

All of these interpretations feature one thing, this man's life was meaningless. He did nothing of importance; knew no-one of importance. No-one cared about him when he died. Even the brevity of the poem suggests the fact that he was unimportant, only worthy of five measly lines. Even through his unimportance however, we still feel sorry for his death. I think that Jarrell was trying to imply that even the most worthless people should be missed and should not be forgotten, although many are.

Sylvia Plath - Daddy

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe 

In which I have lived like a foot 

For thirty years, poor and white, 

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you. 

You died before I had time-- 

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, 

Ghastly statue with one gray toe 

Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic 

Where it pours bean green over blue 

In the waters off beautiful Nauset. 

I used to pray to recover you. 

Ach, du. 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town 

Scraped flat by the roller 

Of wars, wars, wars. 

But the name of the town is common. 

My Polack friend 

Says there are a dozen or two. 

So I never could tell where you 

Put your foot, your root, 

I never could talk to you. 

The tongue stuck in my jaw. 

It stuck in a barb wire snare. 

Ich, ich, ich, ich, 

I could hardly speak. 

I thought every German was you. 

And the language obscene 

An engine, an engine 

Chuffing me off like a Jew. 

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. 

I began to talk like a Jew. 

I think I may well be a Jew. 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna 

Are not very pure or true. 

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck 

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack 

I may be a bit of a Jew. 

I have always been scared of you, 

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. 

And your neat mustache 

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. 

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- 

Not God but a swastika 

So black no sky could squeak through. 

Every woman adores a Fascist, 

The boot in the face, the brute 

Brute heart of a brute like you. 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy, 

In the picture I have of you, 

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot 

But no less a devil for that, no not 

Any less the black man who 

Bit my pretty red heart in two. 

I was ten when they buried you. 

At twenty I tried to die 

And get back, back, back to you. 

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack, 

And they stuck me together with glue. 

And then I knew what to do. 

I made a model of you, 

A man in black with a Meinkampf look 

And a love of the rack and the screw. 

And I said I do, I do. 

So daddy, I'm finally through. 

The black telephone's off at the root, 

The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- 

The vampire who said he was you 

And drank my blood for a year, 

Seven years, if you want to know. 

Daddy, you can lie back now. 

There's a stake in your fat black heart 

And the villagers never liked you. 

They are dancing and stamping on you. 

They always knew it was you. 

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.


From The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, Harper & Row 1981


So this poem has to be one of my favorite poems by Sylvia Plath. I know it seems creepy and almost masochistic, but hidden deep in the dark prose is a little bead of hope. Much of this poem is about the way the speaker's father was abusive, so she created herself "a model of you" and "said I do, I do." In essence, her father was abusive, so she found herself an abusive husband. The little grain of hope comes from the end, with the line "I'm finally through." This point turns the abuse from the present to the past, and makes it seem that she has broken off her relationship with this abusive husband. She also seems happy about it, acknowledging that "Daddy, you can lie back now," indicating that her father no longer controls her life. I think anyone who finds themselves in an abusive relationship can take solace in this poem, realizing that other people have been in the same situation, and perhaps for the same reason. These people were also able to find a way out of these relationships, so it is not a fruitless endeavor to work to better your life. Take heart, ye emburdoned friends, and carry thyselves to new and magnificent heights! (I have no idea why I decided to wax into Olde English, but it somehow fit the mood. I'm also writing this while listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, so that might have something to do with it.)

Anyway, another lesson I like to take from this poem is that even from the darkest things, we can still take something positive. This is an exceptionally dark poem; even so, it has a positive outlook in the end where people are able to better themselves, no matter the situation. I feel like this is a good way of thinking about things, no matter the situation. I hope all of you enjoy the rest of this wonderful Thursday and the rest of Poetry Month!

Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman

Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;-

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee-

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud by night, 

Chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling 

And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in Heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:-

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride

In her sepulcher there by the sea-

In her tomb by the side of the sea. 

This blog post is dedicated to two dear, really awesome friends of mine: Laura, who gave me my copy of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems for my birthday (how perfect for National Poetry Month) and Xandra, who recommended "Annabel Lee" when she saw I was doing Poe, and who is also able to recite quite a bit of "The Raven" without prompting. As a whole I've always enjoyed the Poe I've read, although it's mostly been short stories- The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart in high school, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget for Writing Seminar Quarter 1 this year. The Masque of Red Death is quoted in the beginning of Stephen King's The Shining. I've obviously read the "The Raven", also mentioned, but don't know much of the rest of his poetry.


With a name like Annabel Lee, in a kingdom by the sea, many and many years ago no less, the poem reads off like a fairy tale. I bet the kingdom by the sea was on a cliff, that's appropriately fairy tale. At first thought fairy tales doesn't really seem to suit Poe, except, when you think about it, he is really good at the long, sweeping, romantic syntax that needs to be the backbone of a fairy tale. Except this is Poe, so the woman ends up in a sepulcher by the sea. A tragic fairy tale. Those are things, right? Apparently the Little Mermaid actually commits suicide in the original tale, so tragic fairy tales are very legitimate.


Most fairy tales seem to center around a beautiful maiden, which is something I'm not sure I understand right now after midnight alone in the lounge (because nightblogging). What about women inspires swordfights and gallantry, far away lands, castles, and lines like, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams" in their honor? What about my gender causes intense metaphor, the need for a quest and a bard to tell the story later? There's something about making the maiden the crux of any fairy tale that kind of removes her from the story, because she's this all encompassing force that has to drive so much action and language. Think of Rapunzel in the tower- the maiden's this beautiful symbol, a proverbial tower to be seen across the land, but who is she as a person?


Poe uses the intensity of a beautiful woman quite frequently in his works and even acknowledged in "The Philosophy of Composition" that, "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world". He backs up his use of this theme in "The Raven" in particular by arguing that true Beauty (like that of a woman, I suppose) effects not the heart or the mind but the very soul itself, just as sadness permeates the soul. Therefore combining the death, the pinnacle of sadness, with the paragon of beauty, a woman, will have the greatest emotional, poetic effect. Obviously this theme worked well for Poe, as he used it throughout his works, and I actually discovered that quote originally because someone had applied it to Christopher Nolan as well. This gets joked about a lot on the internet, actually, that every Nolan film has a dead girlfriend/wife in it. (Dark Knight- Rachel, Inception- Mal, Memento- Lenny's wife, it applies for his lesser known films as well.) I wrote about this theme in my write up for Writing Seminar about Marie Roget, citing Chandra Levy and Natalie Holloway as contemporary, real life examples of beautiful dead women still holding intrigue in the media.

Obviously I can't ignore the effectiveness of this theme, sure, but this sure is a lot of responsibility, importance and significance for Poe's Lenore to hold, having all of the epic "The Raven" be about her.


John Green, a young adult novelist in case you don't know, calls this the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, having men put a woman on a pedestal and have them signify so much. He, for his part, tries to write three dimensional young woman who are very flawed and therefore harder to see as perfect archetypes. Pudge may be infatuated with Alaska of Looking for Alaska, but that doesn't make any difference to the plot that splits the book into two parts (spoiler proofed in case you haven't read it- you should). I don't admittedly remember much of Paper Towns, but its arguably most popular quote is Margo saying, "Imagine me completely." I guess that's why romanticizing woman doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally, because I don't see myself as something inspiring quests, or something to be written sonnets about every other minute. I smashed two bottles of Sparkling Grape Juice on my foot a few weekends ago, I still don't have all of my Physics done for the night, goodness knows how long I left my laundry sitting in a dryer down in Sol's, and goodness knows how much longer it's going to be until I fold it. If you expect me to communicate within the first 30 minutes after I wake up, it's probably not going to happen.

This has kind of turned into a feminist post, I think, but not a radical one in my opinion. The Tl;Dr version of what I think about feminism is that I don't want to be an object, and I dislike the idea that people may only talk to me because I don't have a y chromosome. I want people to talk to me because I seem like a cool person overall. I dislike the fact that I am seen as a scarce resource because of the demographics of the college I go to, and that I as an individual are more or less something that obeys the law of scarcity. There's a reason I hang out with the people I do- they don't cause me to feel any of the above things (well, occasional asshole friend with the occasional asshole comment aside. He eventually apologized). In a semi-related note, we're watching Tangled this weekend, in which Rapunzel gets out the tower, has her own non-male fueled motivations, and fights along with the male protagonist instead of just being fought for by him.


It's not that I don't appreciate Poe's love of Annabel Lee, it's a beautiful poem that grabbed my attention as such when I read it. It's just that its beauty and the effect that that creates is a high standard to live up to even for a girl in a kingdom by the sea, I think.