Morrow 1

Megan Morrow

Poem Analysis

Eng117

10-11-20

Analysis of “The Colonel”

For my poem, I chose to read and analyze “The Colonel”. I came across “The Colonel”

on the poetry foundation website. I had never read or even heard of this poem before. “The

Colonel” was written by Carolyn Forche. Forche was born in 1950 in Detroit, Michigan. Her

father, Michael Joseph was a tool and die maker and her mother, Louise Nada was a journalist.

Forche studied creative writing at Michigan State University and received a Master of Fine Arts

from Bowling Green State University. Currently, she is the University Professor at Georgetown

University. At Georgetown she directs the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She is

an “award-winning poet of witness, a human rights advocate, and a national book award

finalist.” (Backland) Forche has published five books of poetry.

To begin, “The Colonel” came from a section in Forche’s The Country Between Us book.

“The Colonel” is considered to be a documentary poem, which is a term that was created by

Forche. Forche’s “declarative sentences do not resemble poetic lines,” they are simple and not

traditional lyrical poetry. (Coiner) With that being said the piece tends to read more like a

newspaper than a poem because of the right-hand margins and block form, which might even be

what she was aiming for with her opening line sounding like a newspaper heading. “The
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Colonel” is a prose poem due to there not being an emphasis placed on the last word of the line.

Instead, the lines end on ordinary words such as ‘the’ or ‘on.’

Forche’s “The Colonel” is based on the Salvadorian Civil War in 1978-1980. She had

taken a trip to this war-torn country and had an encounter with a Salvadoran colonel. With her

opening lines describing the family, the mother making dinner, the daughter filing her nails, the

son going out, Forche is able to connect to the everyday lives of the North American families.

The middle of line four, she talks about how the moon is shining on the house which can be

known as one of the figures and “deliberately draws attention to its artfulness.” (Coiner) This

line should come across as almost gothic and dark but is rather ornate. Next, the broken bottle

stuck in the walls and the grates on the windows like in liquor stores refer to the colonel’s house,

similar to a fortress, wanting to keep people out. However, on the inside, it is quite different.

The family gathered round for a nice lamb dinner has a more cozy or ‘homey’ feeling. Then, the

action comes in. The parrot on the terrace calling out “hello” breaks the colonel into a burst of

anger. In his anger, he pulls out a bag of human ears and dumps them on the table. The ears

represent the Salvadorian people. The people who were murdered during the civil war and those

who refused to listen. When the colonel drops the ear into the glass of water, it symbolizes the

disappearance of the Salvadorian people. Then, the colonel sweeps the ears onto the floor and

raises his glass of wine, which is related to the Salvadorian people being forgotten and the

Salvadorian military rising up. Forche’s last few lines describe the ears on the floor as trying to

listen to what the colonel is saying and what she is trying to get across is ‘is the reader listening,

hearing what I am saying about brutality?’

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Forche did not write this poem as part of a bigger or stronger group, but for her own self

and for the thousands of others who will read this poem. It is meant to open the audience’s eyes

about brutality innocent individuals face everyday from their own governments. Forche’s

“witness poetry was testimonial” according to the New Yorker. (Creswell) She wants the

audience to be aware of what is going on in the world around them and in places that they might

not have heard of before, because the things that are mentioned in her poem happen every single

day to people who have not done anything wrong and do not deserve what is happening to them.

Due to this, I believe that older children would be engaged in this poem. It is a shorter poem so

it would not be hard to get a child to read it. Also, there is a point in the store with the colonel

that the reader does not expect at all with the bag of ears. I think children would be very

engulfed in reading about that. A benefit for children to read “The Colonel” is it is a good

learning opportunity for them, because they would need background on the civil war, El

Salvador, and brutality. They would learn about some of the injustices that occur in our world.

Forche’s poem was written as “cries against injustice” (deNiord) and were not written to be

literary art works.

In conclusion, I found Carolyn Forche’s poem “The Colonel” to be insightful and

different. Her poem describing an encounter with a colonel who sees the power striped away

from his citizens by the military and has this represented with human ears is something truly

disturbing on many levels.

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Work Cited

Backland, Anya. “Carolyn Forché.” Blue Flower Arts RSS, blueflowerarts.com/artist/carolyn-

forche/. Accessed Oct. 11, 2020.

Coiner, Constance. “Carolyn Forché.” Carolyn Forché (b. 1950),

faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/forche.html. Accessed Oct. 11,
2020.

Creswell, Robyn. “Poetry in Extremis.” The New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/books/page-

turner/poetry-in-extremis. Accessed Oct. 12, 2020.

deNiord, Chard. “‘An Inexhaustible Responsibility for the Other’: A Conversation with Carolyn
Forché (Part 1 of 3).” World Literature Today, 23 Dec. 2016,
www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/january/inexhaustible-responsibility-other-
conversation-carolyn-forche-part-1-3-chard-deniord. Accessed Oct. 12, 2020.

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried

a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went   

out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the

cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over

the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.

Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to

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scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On

the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had

dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for

calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of

bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief

commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was

some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot

said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up and pushed

himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say

nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries

home. 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. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As

for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-

selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last

of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some

of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the

ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.