Monday, May 9, 2011

Comments of David Ferry's poem, "The Soldier"

In David Ferry’s poem, The Soldier, he takes the viewpoint of a soldier,
writing a letter, who observes, sets the scene of barracks on a Saturday afternoon, empty except for one last soldier shining his boots, himself and a spider.

Conjecture and observation and a weaving of repetitions combine the way a spider and a soldier could be interchangeable.
The way 16 sentences break over 26 lines, and the weaving of the repetitions, now threading line end to line beginning, now repeating the sound with a variation of word, or the internal rhyme of "bell/well" makes a tight nest, metaphor used towards the end of the poem. Just as a spider is self-sufficient, so too the soldier.
The last five beats of the poem hammer in isolation. He is far from home.

There is variation sentence length, some stopped mid-line, a few sentences which loop over 3-5 lines. A pattern of alliteration for spider in Lines 8-14, dust drifts / lie in lazy/ repeat of sea, variation of drifting; does not carry through in the second part of the poem introduced at line 15, with a line the speaker of the poem seems to be writing in his letter. Both spider and "the other soldier" share the ending word "himself" -- for the spider, his guts which attach him to an outer world; for the soldier, something inside of him to which he is heedful.

Listing some of the repetitions allows a better grasp of the weaving.

Repetition of end words:
pass : line 2, line 17
himself: line 14, line 19
soldier: title and line 16 (and internally, soldiers, line 2, soldier, line 4, line 16, )

spider: (line 5, 6, 11)
privacy (line 7) and Private, line 19;
guts: line 5, line 13 (thread of/ unseeing)
sea: 8 + 9
rubs: line 23, 24
mirror: lines 24, 25
I guess: line 17 + 15 (where the guessing can refer either back or forward in the
submissive: line 19; submissiveness, line 26

Note also how the rhythm repeats: the spider “hangs by the thread of his guts”
And the soldier
line 4: “down at the end of the room”
line 18: “sits on the edge of his bed”


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