Poetry Journal 4/15

This poem to me is the oddest poem I have encountered in a while. At first, it seemed as if it would have some unique twist to it; however, after reading the part about the ears and the harsh language, I became confused with what the point of the poem was. The main thing that really made me ponder was what constitutes poetry if this is considered a poem. There were no common symptoms of poetry in The Colonel; no rhyming, no flow, no alliteration. It honestly seemed as if it was a random story. A second concept that stuck out like a sore thumb was the fact that the general was living in a luxurious life, yet had inhuman and savage-like characteristics about him. To most people, someone who lives a nice life and is a host to foreign guests would probably have nice etiquette and not act like a crazy human-ear hunter. This was not the case in the poem. The general randomly takes out a bag of human ears and dumps them all over the table. The lines: He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass show the gruesome and sickly things that the general did. This is not all though that the general does to show his tough-guy personality; he then says they can go fuck themselves. Overall, because of the peculiar sense and writing style that Forche uses to describe an occurrence, I enjoyed the poem. It was really startling and random, which also brought more excitement and satisfaction from the poem.