Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

David Lehman’s "Amnesia" is a tightly constructed, enigmatic poem that employs a pantoum structure, a form characterized by repeated lines that shift in meaning as the poem progresses. The use of repetition and variation creates an eerie, dreamlike quality, reinforcing the theme of forgetfulness, uncertainty, and cyclical inevitability.

The poem opens with an unsettling assertion: "Neither the actors nor the audience knew what was / coming next." This line immediately establishes a theatrical framework, suggesting both an actual stage performance and the metaphor of life as a scripted but unpredictable drama. The absence of foreknowledge evokes amnesia—not only as personal memory loss but as a broader condition of societal or historical forgetfulness.

The line "That?s when the assassination must have taken place" introduces an event that seems both sudden and inevitable. The phrase "must have taken place" suggests uncertainty, as though the assassination is remembered vaguely or pieced together from fragmented recollections. This fits the poem’s structure, in which meaning continually slips and reforms through repetition.

The next pair of repeated lines introduces John Cage, the avant-garde composer known for embracing randomness and chance in music. "Wolves don’t criticize sheep," Cage grinned. "They eat them." The quote (possibly apocryphal) is chilling, reinforcing themes of predation, power, and submission. The predator-prey dynamic might allude to broader societal or political struggles, including authoritarianism, oppression, or even artistic rivalry.

Then comes an abrupt image shift: "The wedding dress in the window had vanished." This missing object evokes a loss—perhaps of love, commitment, or innocence—contrasting sharply with the violence of the assassination. The juxtaposition of personal and political erasures (a wedding dress disappearing, a public figure being killed) contributes to the poem’s sense of disoriented memory.

As the poem cycles through its lines, the pantoum structure transforms their meanings. For instance, "This announcement will not be repeated." First, it appears as a standalone statement, possibly a reference to official censorship, wartime radio broadcasts, or suppressed knowledge. Later, it becomes part of a broader reflection: "The only victory in love is retreat. So we retreated." This line suggests that withdrawal—whether from love, battle, or engagement with reality—is the only survival strategy. The fatalism deepens when it is followed by "At dawn, the perfect time for an execution." The early morning timing recalls historical executions and also suggests the inevitability of fate, as if violence and forgetting are intrinsic to the cycle of life.

The poem’s visual and artistic references further its thematic complexity. The line "Because painting conveys the image of its time." implies that art captures the essence of history, yet the preceding assertion—"All the suspects were wearing identical blue uniforms."—suggests enforced conformity, perhaps referencing authoritarian control over artistic and individual expression. The notion of "one madness opposing another" hints at the idea that resistance itself can be irrational, or that countering chaos with chaos leads to an endless cycle.

The poem ends where it began, reinforcing its circular, inescapable structure. The repeated line "The car pulled up and the driver said ?get in.?" suggests that history, like memory, loops endlessly. This repetition might symbolize complicity, as the invitation to enter the car could imply submission to power, authority, or fate.

Lehman’s use of the pantoum form is crucial to the poem’s meaning. By forcing lines to repeat but shift subtly in each new stanza, he mirrors the nature of amnesia itself—where fragments of memory reappear in altered ways, leading to distortions rather than clarity. This structure makes the poem feel like a feverish recollection, where each attempt to piece together the past only leads deeper into uncertainty.

Additionally, the tone oscillates between paranoia and detachment, reinforced by cryptic phrases ("The tape erased itself. It was time to begin."). The erasure of the tape suggests deliberate forgetting—whether due to censorship, self-preservation, or the nature of memory itself.

"Amnesia" is a poem about forgetting and remembering, about history repeating itself under new disguises. Its disjointed narrative suggests themes of political violence, personal loss, artistic responsibility, and the erasure of meaning over time. The reference to assassination hints at real-world historical events, while the missing wedding dress and discussions of love suggest personal stakes.

At its core, the poem suggests that we are all trapped in cycles of forgetting and repetition. Whether it is history rewriting itself, relationships dissolving and reforming, or artists struggling with the weight of their era, "Amnesia" conveys a world where no clear resolution exists—only an endless loop of events, each slightly distorted by time.

Lehman’s "Amnesia" is thus a haunting meditation on memory, power, and the inevitability of recurrence, where history’s script is lost and rewritten, and the only certainty is that the car will always pull up, inviting us in once more.

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