[Charlotte Innes]

I love this poem. I haven't encountered it before, and really, the only other poem of Charles Martin's I know is his 9/11 poem--and his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which I also love.

I haven't got much to add to what Michael has said, or the essayist. Every piece of this poem is in place, including the chilling epigraph. Combining the fate of the disappeared with Christ's resurrection is brilliant. And I love the loose, easy, conversational style of the poem, with its mix of matter-of factness and humor. Anything more overwrought would kill the poem for sure. The final three lines are heartbreaking--brilliant, again. And the essay-writer's note on the word "safely" goes to the heart of the poem--the narrator's uneasy stance between victims and dictator.

The poem's tone actually reminds me a little bit of that famous prose poem by Carolyn Forché, "The Colonel," which has the same chilling low key approach.

I love the essayist's engagement with the poem. He/she is unafraid to use personal experience as a basis for exploring the work. The writer delves expertly into the poem, and I think says everything that needs to be said, except for discussing the meter, which Michael touches on.

I actually couldn’t pin down a consistent meter here--quite a few pentameter lines, but some not, especially in the beginning stanza, which almost sounds like prose to me. The lines seem to become more strongly musical as the poem goes on, with the third stanza sounding the most musical, appropriately, because it touches on the resurrection story--although instantly deflates it. I like the casual, bumpy ride of these lines, echoing the uneasiness that winds through the poem as whole.

The essayist says: "I want to believe there is hope hiding under the poem’s political and religious despair, and in its absolute claim that holiness is on the side of murdered. "

I have to say I didn't sense much hope in those final lines, with the image of Christ being thrown into a ravine. But in some ways the essayist is right--in the same way that Forché in "The Colonel" suggests that the murdered (through the poem) will tell the world about what has happened. I get a small hint in Charles Martin's poem, in the stanza about the resurrection, that, just by mentioning it, the poet is suggesting that the evils in the world are not forever, that something good will come.

Added: I just realized that while I was writing this, Andrew was also posting his much more incisive and erudite take on the poem! I heartily agree with him that truth-telling lies at the heart of this poem, that truth will out.

Charlotte