Wiley Davis

September 14, 2010

AP English IV/ Brandt

Poetry Analysis 2

“For the Sleepwalkers”

Edward Hirsch

After Sasha mentioned that “For the Sleepwalkers” was “the most beautiful thing ever

written,” I decided to reread the poem to see if I had missed something. After rereading I still had

the same opinion, “For the Sleepwalkers” is a horrible poem. The main message of the poems is

that all people should act like sleepwalkers through life and trust their heart. That is the only

decent thing I have to say about the poem. The underlying meaning of the poem seems easy to

determine.

One of the reasons I hate the poem is because of its lack of flow. Though I prefer to read

poems that have some sort of rhyming schemes, poems are fine without them as long as they

coherently flow. In this poem, it seems as if Hirsch has written a paragraph, then randomly

separated different sentences in the paragraph to create the lines. Though the lines have

approximately the same number of words and syllables there is no underlying cadence to the

poem. Hirsch is just a writer under the guise of a poet.

Another reason for my disdain for the poem stems from its main conclusion about

sleepwalkers. The poet implies that sleepwalkers are able to sleepwalk because they trust their

heart. Well, actually sleepwalking has nothing to do with trusting ones heart at all. Sleepwalkers

simply walk incognizant of what they are doing. So when Hirsch compares following the heart to

sleep walking the comparison does not add up. Hirsch tries to address this fault in the poem by
referencing the soul coming back into the body after a night away-when the sleepwalker was

walking during the night; but his explanation is inadequate and illogical.

Overall I think this is a horrid poem. Hirsch may have been a better poet in later works,

but “For the Sleepwalkers” is terrible. I’m not sure why others thought it was a great poem. It

uses no great literary innovations and simply portrays a cliché message in an inferior form.