“Charlie Howards Descent”
Reading this poem was like being severed in half and pulled to both sides of a struggle. I know in my life I have been both aggressively intolerant towards views of others and have had my own views kicked aside by arrogant assholes.
“Between the bridge and the river he falls through a huge portion of night; it is not as if falling is something new. Over and over he slipped into the gulf between what he knew and how he was known” (CHD lines 1-8). This poem begins with the speaker narrating an overview of how this young man (Charlie) has been dealing with people’s intolerance of what he felt inside and who he was. A feeling of relentlessness and hopelessness starts emerging from the start. “I imagine he took the insults in and made of them a place to live” (CHD lines 21-22). This line is very powerful in the sense that a feeling of acceptable surrender is laid the heart of Charlie. As the realization that he is entrapped in a world of unbeatable odds overtakes him, he quietly creates a place in his mind to take in the despair and turn it into harmless objects. “Three teenage boys who hurled him from the edge - really boys now, afraid, their fathers' cars shivering behind them, headlights on” (CHD lines 44-48). This is the turning point of the poem; the once tough and vicious young men were in an instant turned into quivering little boys, in a sense, reduced to hiding behind their father’s leg after stripping the mortality away from young Charlie. This second turn in the poem delivers a message of hope, “blesses his killers in the way that only the dead can afford to forgive” (CHD lines 52-54). Charlie’s life could never be accepted by others, but through his death his whole life was justified; and his tormentors were left behind drowning in their own self conscious.“Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting”
In this poem a soldier tries desperately to spell out his love of a woman. Unable to find romantic inspiration in his desolate situation he uses the only thoughts that come to mind, “I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep” (LCDLF line 1-2). He feels trapped, unable to be where he wants to be and unable to leave where he is. He contemplates a letter, a letter that would only deliver the stench of war and distance. In his conclusion he would make light of war in a euphoric, almost on the verge of insanity, statement, “war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other” (LCDLF line 10-12). "Life begins on the other side of despair."
Jean-Paul Sartre
Photos:
drowning man by: the psycot horrothon.blogspot.com
soldier smoking kennyslideshow.com
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