TOP32-DES30
This Old Poem #32:
Donald Hall’s The Man In The Dead Machine  
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 10/27/02  

  You know I’ve tackled this dummy before. I’m gonna do my best lazy DH impression & not even bother to provide you with a link to my prior ruminations on what DH views as his literary contributions. Just go to the Cosmoetica home page, use the Google feature for this site only, type in what’shisname & you will see it all.
  So why take him on again? Well, I need an easy foil as I prepare to tackle some U.S. Poets Laureate in later TOPs. Besides, the titular poem is easily DH’s best poem- for what that’s worth. It’s not too longwinded, like many of his ruminations- er, that long book-length poem on baseball, cast in innings for stanzas. Nor is it so self-indulgent, like his horrible love poems to his dead wife- you know the name! Nor is it so teeth-grindingly ‘anthology’ like his most famous poem- you know its title! It has, easily, DH’s best conceit, & some actual thought into it- just not enough for its own best possibility, despite all my ‘enthusiasm’ for it, this poem. She needa work, as my Caribbean brethren might say. Let’s look at the poem’s version 1.0:

The Man In The Dead Machine

High on a slope in New Guinea
The Grumman Hellcat
lodges among thick bright vines
in 1943. The hand of a pilot
glides through the cockpit.

The helmeted skeleton sits
upright, held by dry sinews
at neck and shoulder, webbing
that straps the pelvic cross
to the seat, the breastbone
to the canvas parachute cover.

Or say the shrapnel misses
him, he flies back to the carrier,
and every morning takes the train,
his hands on a case, sitting
upright, held by firm webbing.

  Not bad, eh? Well, I snookered you. This is my rewritten version, 1 that places a premium on concision & enjambment. It has a nice conceit for a poem that is VERY political- something DH is not known for. Now let’s look at the real version 1.0 & see where the lesser poet, DH, goes astray from my tightened version:

The Man In The Dead Machine

High on a slope in New Guinea
The Grumman Hellcat
lodges among bright vines
as thick as arms. In 1943,
the clenched hand of a pilot
glided it here
where no one has ever been.

 
In the cockpit, the helmeted
skeleton sits
upright, held
by dry sinews at neck
and shoulder, and webbing
that straps the pelvic cross
to the cracked
leather of the seat, and the breastbone
to the canvas cover
of the parachute.

Or say the shrapnel
missed him, he flew
back to the carrier, and every
morning takes the train, his pale
hands on the black case, and sits
upright, held
by the firm webbing.

  OK, both versions have a good title, that we see is explicated as an explicit attack against American Corporata. The skeleton in New Guinea is the equal to the soulless drone on his way to work. But let’s tackle the 3 stanzas side-by-side. Stanza 1:

  Recall that 1 of poetry’s keys is concision. My version says the exact same thing (a rare nice poetic image from DH’s oeuvre), yet in less words. But my concision also adds some ‘poetry’. ‘Thick as arms’ is borderline cliché, so why not just use the important word- ‘thick’- & add it to the prior line? I also make ‘in 1943’ the end of sentence 1. As the start of sentence 2 in DH’s version it acts as a de facto comment that arms were thicker, more muscular, in that year (read as a line, not grammatically). So what? In my version it’s a de facto description of the pilot’s motion in the cockpit. & let us ax DH’s clichéd stanza end. But, look at what is also added in my version. The whole stanza is set in 1943. It does not contain the flashback. The pilot is still alive, even as we later learn his fate. In DH’s version that drama is already past. In my version the reader is drawn to see what happens. In DH’s the gun has already gone off- all we are left with is hoping this can be a good allegory. & just why is the pilot’s hand gliding in the rewrite? Is it a death spasm? A dream-state? My version has mystery. It has a lot that DH’s lacks, even as it has less words & lines. On to stanza 2: 

  Before the narrative, let’s look at basic enjambment. I’ve starred (***) the pointless- if not bad- breaks). DH is attempting to do the slow filmic pan, but the imagery is not dramatic enough to support such a pan. ‘Skeleton sits’ is especially weak because the word ‘helmeted’ dangles uselessly from line 1. ‘Upright, held’ is simply banal description. ‘To the cracked’ could refer to the pilot, himself, but most readers will miss that because DH has blown the earlier line breaks. The weak break between cracked & the leather it grammatically refers to will stick out, instead. Compare that to the rewrite, where the word webbing is used to refer the confluence of neck & shoulder- solely because of the break. THIS IS WHAT GOOD ENJAMBMENT CAN BRING TO A POEM!
  As for the narrative, recall DH’s version’s action is past tense, but in the rewrite we have a sudden switch from the present of 1943 to a later time- the skeleton, here, is jarring. That the whole rewritten version is in a present tense also underlays some dis-ease within the reader’s mind. It’s as if the poem is a sitcom without a laugh track. The reader must pay attention to the chronology of action- not just glance at the tenses. This subliminally involves the reader more. There is an actual reason for the stanza break in my version. Note, we also lose alot of redundant conjunctions- heightening the poetic vs. plainspoken quality. Let’s get stanza 3: 

  Stanza 3 is improved in much the same ways as the 1^st 2: why does DH break at ‘shrapnel’? Is not the present tense in the speaker’s alternate universe more intriguing? Why break at ‘every? & so on. Drop a few more superfluous words & stanza 3 is better. By not starting the poem in the present we lose the more trite circularity with a twist ending, for a more tense & uncertain poem. The concision & better enjambment add some nice elements the original lacks, & this is now a very effective political poem, rather than a pretty decent 1. Let me do give DH some kudos. He was correct to not indent stanza 2. It allows the reader to be lulled, slightly, into believing there was no change in content, nor shift of drama. My version builds upon, & heightens, that. This is 1 of the rare instances where DH actually shows some cogitation in his poetry. Would that he had done more of it here & all over his corpus.
  But, you say, I still like DH’s version- as you cling to that fallacy that ‘they would not have published it were it not good’. I can’t & won’t argue with a person’s mere ‘likes’ they are irrelevant to me & to good art. You might, indeed, like the original more, but mine is demonstrably better. Don’t believe me? Then trust yourself, & ask yourself how your 1^st true reaction to DH’s version was, after you had read mine. See?  

Final Score: (1-100):

Donald Hall’s The Man In The Dead Machine: 70
TOP’s The Man In The Dead Machine: 90

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