S8-DES6
Masculine Rites Of Passage: 6 Great American Poems
by Berryman, Cullen, Emanuel, Hayden, Roethke, & Schneider
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 5/11/02

  Between the twin buffooneries of emasculating feminazism (think guru Andrea Dworkin) & bubbleheaded Campbellian masculoonism (think guru Robert Bly) lie the truer forms of femininity & masculinity- &, NO, I don’t mean the Marilyn Monrovian nor Rambovian extremes either! The feminine has been most thoroughly dealt with in contemporary English language poetry- in all of its shadings. Whole poetic careers & anthologies have been crafted around it. The same has not been so of masculinity. Assertive/masculine poetic protagonists are missing the last few decades. In fact, 1 probably has to go pre-WW1 to get a sense of ‘the masculine’. There were the Beatniks, of course- but they were loony chauvinists; & a good portion of them were queer. But, aside from the stray Richard Hugo or, yes, Robert Frost (the only 2 poets who come quickly to mind), the masculine has been pretty much MIA in poetry. Surely I jest? Well, by masculine I don’t necessarily mean gendered- but rather aggressive. As an analogue I turn to basketball where players’ playing style is called ‘black’ or ‘white’ dependent on whether they are flashy & smooth (black), or steady & persistent (white). While the terms originally applied to the color of the players’ skin there have been ‘white’ black players- think of bulldogs like a Paul Silas, Charles Oakley, or Karl Malone, & ‘black’ white players: think of mercurial players as John Havlicek, Rick Barry, or John Stockton. Similarly, there has been 1 published definitive ‘masculine’ female poet- Sylvia Plath, & hundreds of published ‘feminine’ male poets. The key is publication here- quite often I have encountered young male poets who are very ‘masculine’ writers- but, in order to get ahead in the PC Elitist world of poetry they must check their testicles at the door.
  The rest of this essay is dedicated to 6 poems that are very masculine- in fact, they core into the roots of ‘the masculine’ in general. These poets often wrote (& write) very masculinely. But these poems all revolve around a central tenet of the masculine: becoming a man, the passage from boyhood to more; but in an especially American way. Some of these poems are arguably the best things these poets ever wrote. All are great poems, even the least of them. Alphabetically, the poets & poems are John Berryman’s The Ball Poem, Countee Cullen’s Incident, James Emanuel’s For The 4^th Grade, Prospect School: How I Became A Poet, Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays, Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz, & my own War. That 3 of the 6 poets are black (guess which?) is just happenstance- or not? Perhaps it is reflective of a greater tendency toward the masculine in black poetry? Regardless of that or any other factors you will note a lack of ‘code words’ in my descriptions & analyses of these poems. I don’t care if the poets were nice guys or SOBs- just how good the poem he wrote was. All the poems are less than a page long, & I will give them in full, analyze their pros & cons, their ‘masculinity quotient’, & try to see connections between them all. Excelsior!

1) The Ball Poem
John Berryman

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do?  I saw it go 
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then 
Merrily over--there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down 
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now 
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,
Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move 
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do?  I saw it go 
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then 
Merrily over--there it is in the water!
No use to say 'O there are other balls':

An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy
As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down 
All his young days into the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now      

  Why is the boy’s grief over his loss so maximal? The answer is obvious- whenever something is experienced for the 1^st time it is the ultimate! There is nothing to contrast it too; also children hyperbolize & the speaker could be getting in touch with that part of himself that recalls such a trauma. Not only is his grief ‘ultimate’, but all his young days before this are recalled- this is a life-passes-before-the-eyes moment. The boy is fixed (neutered?) by his grief- this then the reason the rest of the poem acts against this ‘fixing’. Yes ‘fix’ here also could mean making him well eventually, or also fixates him on a goal, but the neutering sense is the most apropos for the poem. The speaker both comments & warns others that the boy should be left be. This is the masculate ‘deal with it’ option. Reimbursement or replacement will not do. It was not a ball, but THE ball. Now, go back to the title & see how even the the of the title takes on import- the title, we see, is VERY active. This quintet ends with a great enjambment- the dangling ‘Now’. While the word provides assonance with the end-word down 3 lines prior, & starts the sentence of the next line, its purpose is to end line 10’s self-lineated statement. The reason poems are broken in to lines is not for music, so much as to lend multiplicity of meanings to words & phrases. Were this poem a paragraph you would totally lose the importance of line 10’s ‘A dime, another ball, is worthless now.’ meaning. The ‘Now’ places us directly on the cusp of something- in this case the rite of passage. Speaking of which- we now sense the creeping American aspect of the poem. While all masculine cultures may tell their boys to deal with their pain ‘like a man’, the speaker’s cautionary ‘I would not intrude’, suggests a foreknowledge that American/capitalist/consumer culture will always devalue the meaning of things- ‘just get another’. The question of the water comes up again (water a very feminine symbol)- is it a sewer or did the ball go from the street directly into the mentioned harbor? If the boy were right at harbor’s edge he might be staring at or out into it, not staring down his youth there. Perhaps the harbor is only the imagined destination of the ball- the boy knows where the sewer leads? & the dime mentioned to buy another ball suggests we are dealing with a rubber ball- the type used in stickball- the classic American ‘spaldeen’ which for decades cost no more than a dime, & could be bought at any Nickel-N-Dime store. This means the boy is probably closer to 10 than 5- this is not a big colorful ball. This also suggests the classic American ball lost in a sewer scenario rather than some big ball lost directly to the harbor. The sewer interpretation also adds the feminine of the sewer pipes to the poem- the masculine ball lost to the feminine sewers & water. Still, it is left ambiguous despite my leanings. The music in the poem is fine throughout, & not a cliché (of word nor arc) in sight. The middle 5 lines:

He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,      

  Line 11 states bluntly the thing to be passed. Line 12 contains another great enjambment. ‘In a world of possessions’ serves as the grammatical end to the sentence begun by the great dangling ‘Now’, but also the 1^st ½ of line 12’s great declarative: ‘In a world of possessions people will take balls!’- & to take possession it takes balls. This is the speaker defining the problem outright- & while this was true before America, it’s never been truer than in America! Then, the middle line of the poem- an almost hushed soothing after the nakedness of the last 2 lines. Yet, we also get a sense that the price for ballsiness is losing again & again. Line 14 is more balms, & line 15 sees a corner turned. The boy is on his way past the loss! Alliteration is especially strong in this section & the only near cliché is the desperate before eyes, but that is partly relieved by the fact that we are dealing with a little boy, & not an adult. Next 5:

The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the street
A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,

Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark
Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,
I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move 
With all that move me, under the water
Or whistling, I am not a little boy.      

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger, 
And so I smiled, but he poked out 
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

  This masterly poem takes on both less than JB’s & CC’s poems, yet also more than both the other poems. This poem does not engage Americanness in the relentless way the other 2 poems do- but it is even more blatantly about the masculine & rites of passage. I did a whole essay on how underrated & excellent a poet JE is, & as further proof of that excellence, I never even mentioned this remarkable poem at all. JE, is in a lot of ways, the spiritual descendant of the CC take on the race question as regards to poetry. There is nothing here to suggest the child/speaker is black- except that the poet is. The title’s 1^st ½  reveals the poem’s provenance while the 2^nd ½ marks it as a definitive Rites Of Passage poem. Like JB’s poem this poem is about loss- & not just a singular loss which foreshadows, but losses aplenty; yet it also is about hope- this boy needs no huzzahs from the speaker- probably because the boy & speaker are definitely the same person. Like CC’s poem the remembrances are told in a child-like fashion (the rhyming patterns), yet the process of this boy’s self-awareness is stated like a recipe- there is no mystery. Stanza 1:

My kite broke loose,
took all my string
and backed into the sun.
I followed far as I could go
and high as I could run.

  The poem starts with an archetypal American moment (think Charlie Brown) wonderfully described- the kite is a ‘being’ which willfully takes itself, & the boy’s string & retreats into (backing up) the sun- that über-phallic orb. The boy attempts retrieval- we do not know what stanza 2 holds but we know the boy will be unsuccessful- the masculine in this cosmos will take things- the boy unknowingly follows after it, perhaps even desiring manhood subconsciously. Like any American boy, his pursuit is dogged- after all, in America, all things are possible if you try, try, try! Stanza 2:

My special top went spinning
down the gutter, down the drain.
I heard it gurgling sideways,
saw it grinning in the rain,
my string wrapped around it
while I reached for it in vain.

  Again, a Rockwellian moment- until a Ball Poemian intrusion. The top goes down a drain- no doubt about where this toy ends up! It, too, is more than a thing- it grins & takes the boy’s string with it in the other direction. Again, the boy does all he can to retrieve it. The music is superb- the rhymes lighten the mood of what could be a very depressing start to this poem. We are really pulled swiftly along through the poem so far. Stanza 3:

My dog got thin and went away.
He took his leash- the wrapping string
that we pretended was a rope-
and went as far as he could hope
to find the sickbed where I lay.

  Still more Americana- a boy & his dog. But this 3^rd example of a thing-cum-being-cum string-stealer is the most peculiar yet. The dog apparently dies- it got thin & went away- a child’s euphemism for death. But, then, from beyond death the dog takes his leash/string, only to come back to the boy in a moment of sickness. Or was the dog ill, dumped by the speaker’s parents, only to return to his grief-stricken master? Either interpretation works. The important thing is the return this time. Not a cliché in sight. Stanza 4:

And now, when I remember strings
and how they bind together things,
and how they stretch (like reach and run),
and hold (like hope) and give (like sun),
I tie together things I know
and wind up with a poem to show

    Here we get the tying up (pun meant). We get to know what strings mean to the speaker & how the prior incidents were used by the speaker to grow- he recaps them. Despite the title this poem is not really about how the speaker became a poet- but became a man. His being a poet is just a nice metaphor in service to that idea. Unlike the boy in JB’s poem, this boy has ‘come through’ all the masculine BS- he has learned to use loss constructively. Unlike JB’s boy, ultimately disavowed & discarded, JE’s boy practically sloughs off pain & gives a how-to on how such can be made useful. Unlike CC’s boy, permanently scarred by a singular nasty moment, JE’s boy is unbowed. CC’s boy seems only to have ‘made it’ through the trials of boyhood & manhood partly because the world- as a whole- improved. The change in JE’s poem is innate within the speaker. Nor is it the precipice either JB’s or CC’s boys must surmount. JE’s boy seems almost preternaturally adaptive- almost cocky. The title contains the word ‘Prospect’- which is supposed to be the school’s proper name, but we see it also seems to serve as a primer for how to become. 1 can almost imagine there being other poems with other last words in the title: How I Became A ______, etc. Of the 3 poems thus far, this poem is the only 1 whose protagonist is/becomes an artist. That it is easily the most optimistic & uplifting of the poems certainly goes against the current grain of ‘the artist as eternal agonist’; especially with the wonderfully childish rhymes giving the poem just the right bounce. & although the poem ostensibly is a look back, in reality this poem is heading onward.

[Hear James Emanuel read this poem on Omniversica's Show # 2, recorded 2/8/03]

4) Those Winter Sundays

            Robert Hayden  

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

  This is 1 of the best American sonnets ever published- in fact, it is probably 1 of the 10 best sonnets ever published- period. Like JE (although not to the same degree), RH is a shamefully ignored poet. Part of this is due to his relatively slim output, & also (ala JE & CC) his refusal to merely be a ‘Black Poet’. This poem is typical of alot of his work- the poem is a remembrance of boyhood. Like JE’s poem this poem is more on masculinity than Americanness- although it contains that, too. The masculinity in this poem, however, is more directly two-fold than the 1^st 3 poems. Here, we see it 1^st displayed in the speaker’s/boy’s father, & then in the lament of the boy. We see male violence- but not directly- there is no listing of its horrors, nor a singular moment. Here the violence is most insidious. Let’s hit this incredible poem stanza-by-stanza:

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

  Before we start with the poem, though- let us examine the title. The most important word is, obviously, ‘Those’. Why? Because it allows us to see the speaker’s lost days as meaning ‘all of them’, or- more intriguingly- that the Sundays described were only some of a larger group. Perhaps the speaker was not routinely callus, but swung with the moods- meaning the poem’s end angst is all the more deep because its source was inexplicable to even the speaker? But, line 1 seems to dash that possibility as the word ‘Sundays’ has no such qualifiers- therefore the titular ‘Those’ is probably used in the exasperated sense. Note the hard ‘k’ sound throughout this stanza- the cracking sounds really drive home what the words impart. Unlike JE’s or CC’s rimes, this poem avoids that for a more colloquial feel. This lets us believe the speaker is a bit more mature & objective than the more child-like narrators of JE’s & CC’s poems, although not quite as clinical as JB’s haughty speaker. Alliteration & assonance are strong, yet serve the narrative- they don’t overwhelm it. As for the story, we get the masculine as rarely portrayed- the caretaker, the protector, the engager of drudge, even when necessity is not present- but duty is. The speaker then acknowledges his father’s lot directly. As the stanza ends we are expecting an expansion upon that acknowledgement. A lesser poet would eagerly go to that safe harbor, but not RH. Stanza 2:

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

  Instead, we go directly back to the scene. No heavy soundplay in this stanza- we are in the middle section of the poem. The 1^st 3 lines set a scene but the payoff is the stanza’s last line- here we see the beast of masculinity described bluntly: ‘chronic angers’. This seems to be the possible reason for the poem’s ultimate denouement, as well why the speaker’s relationship with his father became what it did- & again we are to presume the speaker is male because the poet is; whether any of this is true is no concern. But, not the speaker’s/boy’s/son’s choice of words re: the angers. The angers are not specifically ascribed to dear old dad- but to ‘the house’. Here is another great sign of the masculine- the ability to fob off responsibility, to rationalize, to not deal with angers & resentments. We do it with our own failings & with those of others we admire. It is the classic exculpation of the father into a more heroic mold. What the angers are based on is not important, although 1 may presume the father’s dead end job, his living for the benefit of his family is part of the cause, the resentment, etc. Stanza 3 brings it home:

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

  The 1^st line of this stanza is brilliant- because of the line it follows. After just rationalizing for his father’s flaws, the speaker is nonetheless indifferent to the fact- probably because there’s been a swift change in the narrative time- it’s just a hiccup, but we’ve gone from the present to the past- & in the past we just get a description, not an analysis. & the indifference is presented as straight-forwardly as possible, with 2 addenda of dad’s good deeds, as well. Then we get 1 of the greatest end couplets in all of sonnetry. The great lament: repetition of the ignorance of youth- heightened especially because we’ve already seen that the speaker NOW does know, & understand his father’s sacrifices, & probably knows the real reason for the angers (although, thankfully, does not make them explicit). Yet, the 2^nd ½ of the lament (despite the great word choices) is a RETURN to the masculine need for lack of emotion. Instead of the full exasperation we get just a bit, & then the speaker’s psyche falls back into the masculine trap- no flowery or clichéd end- we get love’s austerity & offices so lonely. The word choice of ‘offices’ is especially brilliant & fortuitous because in the last word of this poem we, the poem, the male protagonists, & the emotion, is thoroughly Americanized. Work/commerce, etc. cannot even NOT infect the speaker’s emotional moment. Not only do we get the speaker’s lament withdrawing & intellectualizing its grief- but we get the insidious seep of what is probably at the root of the son’s indifference to his father- the fact that his father is not there all but that 1 day a week. Readers- REALLY READ this poem & you will see my analysis is smack-on. Look how subtly, & almost invisibly, this great poem by a masterful poet turns what could have been the most banal of clichés: ‘I loved my dad.’, into a laser-sharp political poem, as well. This is what great poets can do, that a lesser poet would not even think of.

5) My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy. 

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

 

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

 

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

 

    Of the 6 poets discussed in this essay, Roethke was the least skilled. Most of his poems were mediocre rhymes with little intellectual content, & often mawkish. His best poems, however (like this- his best known), are little gems. For some reason this poem is also very misunderstood. It is often taken as being about an abused child. This is patently untrue- but it shows how, even retroactively, the PC Elitist need to politicize things often misinterprets good poetry into bad. The title gives the poem the basis for its 1-2, 1-2 rhythmic feel. But let’s look at this poem- its relation to masculinity, rites of passage, Americanism- but, especially why PC Elitists have bastardized the poem’s meaning. The 1^st stanza:

            The whiskey on your breath
            Could make a small boy dizzy;
            But I hung on like death:
            Such waltzing was not easy.

  Like JE’s & CC’s poems a deliberately childlike feel is invoked by the quatrain rhyme scheme. Like RH’s poem we are about to explore a father-son relationship from afar. The poem starts in media res, after the poem’s title sets us into the dance. We get the reek of alcohol- & it must have been pungent because not only is it described that way, but it’s the genesis of the ‘memory’- strong smells often are. We know the speaker is a small boy during the recalled events. Apparently the boy is up in the air (or at least off his feet) & hanging on to something- we presume it’s his father because of the title- but we are not yet certain. We then get the very child-like qualifier to end the stanza. A very nice music, with hints of depths to be plumbed- especially in the fact that the word death appears. Yet it’s the act of clutching that is like death: presumably omnipresent, not Death (capital D). Here is where PCEs diverge from the rest of us- they cannot see death being a mere metaphor- if death is there, death IS ALL! Next stanza:

 

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

 

  Here cometh the testosterone! This is not a ‘dance’ as much as it is a romp- aided & abetted by the liquor. This display of the masculine upsets the feminine in the house- but the feminine be damned! The mother is not even just a mother- she (the feminine) is reduced to merely a visage unchanging. Although there is no abuse evidence here- the PCE meter is ringing, because how dare the feminine be belittled! Stanza 3:

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

 

  We now see a more ‘real’ sight of the dancing duo: the boy’s wrist is held by his father, yet we notice it is battered somewhere- what this is a remnant of we do not know. Wisely, TR does not expand- it is just a marker to help present a more believable portrait. Yet, PCE’s take this as evidence that the father bruised his hand while beating the son- the evidence? Nada! We then see the boy pressed up to his father’s belly (if a belt buckle) or chest (if a suspender buckle)- & even in this embrace a little unintended violence occurs- men just can’t help themselves, & all that. Last stanza:

 

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

 

  Here is where the rites of passage aspect enters- or rather, the speaker comes to a precipice- & retreats. The father is apparently tapping on the boy’s head as they dance- yet PCEs see this as him hitting the child. We then get the almost sexual implication- waltzing off to bed- that also gives PCEs the willies- DAD WAS A PEDOPHILE! But the father is obviously putting the boy to sleep- no physical or sexual violence occurs. The important point is that the boy allows himself to be swept along- there is no resistance. He has not yet struck for independence, he has not come to the cusp. Of the 5 poems so far examined- this poem offers the least in all areas- it is not the philosophic rebuke of JB. Nor is it CC’s stinging memory. JE’s cocky protagonist is worlds away from this dependent boy. & RH’s relationship is up for re-examination in that poem. Here, TR’s boy is still ‘all boy’- early dependence is a natural part of the masculine; & the boy has a good example of the swaggering machismo that awaits- even if it is not directly addressed the way it is in the other poems. This is almost the masculine primeval. What is to come is to come. The next poem, by me, deals more directly with the masculine than any of the other poems.

6) War
Dan Schneider

As kids Ziggy, Georgey and I played
war in the tenements by Irving Square Park.
Often on treks up broken stairs or rusty
fire escapes we'd step over corpses

or junkies. But this day a building
burped one right out of a second-story 
hole. It was a big brown one and it   
smiled upside down as it writhed on

the wrought-iron fence plunged between 
its left shoulderblade and heart. It
smiled. We smiled. We played war
three hours before anyone came. When

they took it away no one cleaned
the iron post. We liked war.

  The prior 5 poems give hints at the masculine totality- but my poem directly addresses it. It may be worth noting that all of the previous poems are also all at least 30 years old or more. This poem, 1 of the 1^st unassailably great poems I wrote, was penned in the mid 1990s. This free verse sonnet’s title is about as masculine as 1 can get- plus it’s only 1 word, 3 letters. We should, upon reading the title, be prepared for anything- this must be about the familiar subjects of war. 1^st stanza:

As kids Ziggy, Georgey and I played
war in the tenements by Irving Square Park.
Often on treks up broken stairs or rusty
fire escapes we'd step over corpses

  Instead, line 1 is a reversal- an idyllic scene. The speaker directly names 2 other boys. Of all the poems this is the only 1 with multiple boys, & named- to boot! What is war if it is singular? Line 1 ends with a great enjambment. What is played? War- so we are not dealing with a real ‘war’- just youthful masculinity in training. We also break from the other poems by that contrast, as well as the next 1 between the urban & the natural- we get a specific place name, too. Another difference between this boy & the previous boys is that he & his pals are obviously from a lower level of society- frolicking amidst tenements. JB’s boy is from unknown circumstances, CC’s boy’s important feature is his race, JE’s boy is an artist-to-be, RH’s & TR’s boys are sons, but my boy(s) are poor, & acclimated to all sorts of ills. This stanza’s hard ‘k’ & ‘t’ sounds are especially harsh- the poor boys are so inured they merely step over corpses. Yet, things seem askew. This is because we are left with a dangling line break at ‘rusty’. But this is not an Oldsian break without meaning. This break is deliberate & serves 3 purposes: 1) it can modify the preceding description of stairs, 2) it can suggest a deliberate dissonance (especially if familiar with how scrupulous my enjambment usually is), & 3) it suggests a child-like pause in the middle of description, as if taking something in- this is the enjambment equivalent of the childish rime schemes employed by CC, JE, & TR. Next stanza:

or junkies. But this day a building
burped one right out of a second-story 
hole. It was a big brown one and it   
smiled upside down as it writhed on

  Another excellent enjambment is revealed from the end of the 1^st stanza. As jarring as corpses are to the reader, the implication is that junkies are even more revulsive- at least to the speaker. This is because the junkies follow the corpses- especially after a doubly dramatic line & stanza break. Another specific follows- we are in the daylight- there is no trickery of shadow- this is not RH’s morning, nor TR’s evening. We then end the line with another child-like break right between something important. The inanimate is animated. A junky has been ‘burped’ out of a building- this implies an accidental fall- from the 2^nd story. Another good enjambment occurs because by breaking at ‘second-story’ it is implied that there is more to this poem than the first-story being told. The 3^rd line also has the child-like break, but the enjambment serves to dualize what is said. Grammatically, a junky has fallen out of a building’s aperture, & the junky is brown colored. The junky is also viewed as an it- more of the speaker’s inurement. Whether the junky is perceived that way because of his/her (we presume it’s male, given the poem, but it is not certain) color or because of being a junky is not key- the fact of difference, itself, is. But, what the line says is something else. The line makes the very hole in the building brown & alive. Both interpretations are correct & intended. The stanza ends with the impaled junky presumably hanging upside down, yet dazedly smiling- as oblivious to the boys as they are to it. That the junky smiles even as it writhes is especially chilling- the last word in the stanza implies it is a scene that was not just momentary, but continued. Here, the very description of these events is as chilling as any in poetry. While it lacks the graphic quality of a Wilfred Owen poem, the matter-of-fact rendering is almost clinical. Stanza 3:

the wrought-iron fence plunged between 
its left shoulderblade and heart. It
smiled. We smiled. We played war
three hours before anyone came. When

  Now we see another great enjambment has ended the prior stanza & carried over to this 1. ‘On’ not only represented the junky’s continuing pain, but denotes where it landed. Impalement, & a very specific impalement. The 2^nd line ends seemingly with a child-like break, but it also reinforces the junky’s ‘itness’- it is less than human. Yet it still smiled. The boys smile back- all in a day’s play, etc. They go on playing their mock of ultimate masculinity. The next line tells us for how long. What a political comment- 3 hours before the authorities come (although, in truth, it was 40-45 minutes; but a boy will exaggerate, & a reader should expect a memory to distort things- this poem is art, after all!). A death so casual there’s not any bother from the boys, &- even worse- the medical & police crews. The line ends with what seems like a bad break- but coming after the most gripping line of the poem, so far, we see that the disorienting effect is intended- plus it’s alliterative with the prior ‘between’ that ends the stanza’s 1^st line. That it is extra long & emphasized due to being a stanza break, as well. Last couplet:

they took it away no one cleaned
the iron post. We liked war.

  Here we get an explicit demarcation. The speaker has already grouped himself, Ziggy, & Georgey as ‘we’ in opposition to the ‘it’ of the junky; but we see that every ‘we’ must have its ‘they’- this gives us another reason why the last stanza’s end was not a bad enjambment. The masculine bane of ‘the other’ emerges in the form of the proper authorities. To poor boys the authorities are the perpetual ‘other’. Here we get the intrusion of the political- this is a very American poem, now- even if it had not seemed so before. The ‘other’ is so blasé about the junky’s death that no one even bothers with attempting to give the appearance of a restored normalcy. Presumably the junky’s blood & innards still flavor the fence pole which impaled it. The penultimate line seems to end with a poor break- but the disorientation effect is at work again- plus the last line shows us how effective a break it is. Bear in mind- an effective enjambment can be had not just by what the end of 1 line seems, but by how the start of the next line results. The ‘iron post’ that is the end of the prior line’s enjambed sentence, also serves as a defining symbol for war- a spear or arrow. & the 3 boys seem to still be enjoying themselves. Their mock war must often be littered with such real scenes of suffering. Note the last 3 words. The boys ‘liked’ war. They do not love it- kids always ‘like’ things- that word choice suggests & ends the poem with the same matter-of-factness with which it began. Kids use the word ‘like’ in many instances & whether or not they are indifferent to something, or really like it, they always say the word ‘like’. This is a particularly American colloquialism & underscores just where this all has played out. Also, the war referred to at poem’s end may just in fact be the actual thing- the speaker may be saying to the world, ‘After this, bring on the real thing! We’re ready!’ Of all the boys we’ve seen, this boy (& his cohorts) are the only 1’s who have fully passed over their rites. Even JE’s boy is encountered (in the poem) at some moments ‘before’. These 3 boys are well past- in fact, LONG past whatever rites were theirs to surmount.

Wrap Up

  When I wrote War I did not consciously think of other poems, but in the back of my mind I wanted to achieve some of the starkness & stinging power CC’s poem did. My decision to evoke a child-like quality (albeit by a different means), & end with a singular statement, was done with none of the Bloomian ‘anxiety of influence’- like all good artists, I saw what worked & took what I needed & adapted it to my own purposes. Art is not truth, after all. For example- in real life, the game that Georgey, Ziggy, & I were playing before the impalement of the junky was really ‘King Of The Hill’- not ‘War’- but dramatically & symbolically ‘War’ made for a better poetic metaphor.
  Another ancillary point that these poems bring to mind is the difference between ‘greatness’ & ‘importance’ in poetry, or art. Of the 6 poems, all (save perhaps TR’s “My Papa’s Waltz’) are probably technically & dramatically ‘great’- that is they are original & excellent in how they achieve their art- but great poems are not always important poems- & important poems are not always great poems. A reason for this is that there are 2 types of ‘importance’ relevant to art: 1) the work, itself, intrinsically says something of social or artistic import in an interesting or artistically important way. CC’s ‘Incident’- with its use of the child-like speaker’s exposure of racism’s nitty-gritty- is a good example. 2) public reception & influence on later artists matters. Some of the more famous poems by a T.S. Eliot or an Allen Ginsberg would fall into this category. I.e.- they are known more for what they said, & the era they said it, than what is actually said, or how it’s artistically conveyed. But none of this is dependent on excellence itself. For example, my poem ‘War’- since it’s yet to get a large audience- cannot yet be considered an ‘important’ poem, despite its greatness. The same can be said for JE’s ‘For The 4^th Grade, Prospect School: How I Became A Poet’- which while published has had little audience or influence. Yet, time should remedy these ills- just think of the typical Academic twaddle that DWMs write on their fathers, & compare it to RH’s ‘Those Winter Sundays’, or the sharp yet sly political commentary of my ‘War’ vs. the typical screeching PC political pap most poets spew.
  But, this is the general way of things. Time does tend to right these sorts of wrongs. It is very unfashionable, these days, to write of masculinity (& its peculiar American strain) & not reflexively bash it. That these 6 poems address those issues, especially in the context of Rites Of Passage is very impressive. More impressive, however, will be the hope that these poems & poets find larger audiences, & can exert positive influences, lest we be stuck, decades from now, in the same dull & turgid self-loathing pseudo art that now prevails. Geez, almost makes a bris sound palatable by comparison.

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