The Colonel

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1981

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form & Meter

Forché’s “The Colonel” is a prose poem, or a poem that eschews traditional lineation and metrical structures. The poem consists of a single, large block of text uninterrupted by stanza breaks. For ease of reference, this guide maintains the line numbers as the text appears on the Poetry Foundation (see: Poem Text). By that version of the poem, the text is a hefty 25 lines in length. However, were the text published elsewhere, the size of the margins, page, and typeface could change the lineation without compromising the form of the poem. Properly speaking, a prose poem has no poetic lines but instead relies on other literary devices to organize its meaning and rhythm. Regardless of the lineation, “The Colonel” consists of 325 words.

Because the poem has no punctuation through line breaks, it relies heavily on syntax and the unit of the sentence. The text is lyric, imagistic, and stylized, all features of poetry, but its lack of lineation recalls more traditional prose journalism. The poem straddles journalistic reportage and lyric verse.

Image

Though it may be a simple prose block, the poem achieves its lyric quality by employing the poetic image at intervals. The first few lines of the poem could, perhaps, be a somewhat stylized piece of journalism, or perhaps an essay. However, Forché quickly introduces a poetic image, tapping metaphor to maintain poetic cohesion: “The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house” (Lines 4-5). This appearance of figurative language around a striking image lends vibrancy to the surrounding details, suggesting an equivalence between simple observation (“daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion” [Lines 3-4]) and metaphor. This implied equivalence leads the reader to approach the text differently than if it were simple reporting. Here, in a long prose block of declarative sentences, a reader cannot know what to expect around the next period—it could be a “cop show” (Line 5) on television, it could be bottles that can “cut [a man’s] hands to lace” (Line 7).

Furthermore, Forché’s limited use of poetic imagery prepares the reader for the poem’s violent central image, but her restraint with imagery (only two or three before the sack of ears) also confers greater impact to the final image. This image, the “sack” (Line 16) of “many human ears” (Line 17), is unique to the poem in that its development involves both literal and metaphoric language. For example, the “ears […] pressed to the ground” (Line 25) or “spilled […] on the table” (Line 17) have the ring of figurative language but instead simply describe the scene. Alternatively, that the ears are “like / dried peach halves” (Lines 17-18), that one “c[omes] alive” (Line 20) in “a water / glass” (Lines 19-20), or that some “on the floor [catch] this scrap of [the Colonel’s] voice” (Line 24) modify the scene with simile and metaphor, respectively.

Syntax

Line breaks are a primary feature of most poetry. Even when English language poetry in the 20th century begins rejecting traditional verse features, like end rhyme or adherence to closed forms like the sonnet, free verse almost always retains lineation. Even when dispensing with end rhyme, metrical patterns, and forms, poems can modulate rhythm and create emphasis by using the line—an easy way to distinguish themselves from prose.

Any poem that eschews a major feature of verse must compensate with a different literary strategy. Thus, prose poems are radical in their avoidance of the poetic line and must use creative strategies to accomplish what the line does for most poems. In the case of “The Colonel,” the poem heavily relies on syntax to create rhythm and emphasis. Most of the poem’s many sentences have a simple subject-predicate, declarative structure. Most of the sentences are short, and most note some concrete detail in the scene. This allows the poem, though written in prose, to maintain a rhythmic quality. The reader bounces from one simple observation to the next. With this rhythm established, the poem is free to vary the syntax to surprise the reader, create emphasis, and create counter-rhythms.