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Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained | |||
"Counting Small-Boned Bodies" by Robert Bly is a stark, powerful critique of war and its dehumanizing effects, particularly the way in which the enormity of loss and suffering is reduced to mere statistics. Through a grim and ironic tone, Bly confronts the reader with the horrifying reality of war's toll on human life, challenging the ways in which society, and perhaps the military and government, trivialize or manage the perception of death on a massive scale. The poem's repetitive structure, with the refrain "If we could only make the bodies smaller," serves as a haunting meditation on the desire to minimize the scale of tragedy to make it more palatable or easier to ignore. Bly uses hyperbole to emphasize the absurdity of this wishful thinking, suggesting a grotesque scenario where the dead are so diminished in size that they could be displayed on a desk or worn as jewelry, "a body into a finger-ring, for a keepsake forever." This imagery starkly contrasts the sacredness typically associated with human life and the rituals of mourning and remembrance. By invoking the image of a plain "white with skulls in the moonlight," Bly not only evokes the mass graves and battlefields littered with the dead but also the haunting memory and the indelible mark left on the conscience of humanity in the aftermath of conflict. The reference to the moonlight adds a layer of chilling beauty to the scene, underscoring the poem's exploration of the tension between the aestheticization of war and the brutal reality of its consequences. The poem's focus on "small-boned bodies" further underscores the vulnerability of the individual amidst the machinery of war. It reflects on the reduction of human beings to their most basic physical remnants, stripping away their identities, stories, and the full weight of their absence from the world. "Counting Small-Boned Bodies" can be read as a critique of how society, media, and governments abstract and quantify the human cost of war, distancing the public from the visceral reality of loss. Bly challenges the reader to confront the moral implications of this detachment and to recognize the profound individual and collective grief that such numbers obscure. In its concise, impactful verses, the poem captures the profound sadness and absurdity of war's toll on human life, questioning the moral and ethical dimensions of how societies engage with, remember, and sometimes forget the true cost of conflict. Bly's work stands as a poignant reminder of the need to see beyond numbers and statistics to the human stories and lives that they represent.
| Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO THE HAWKS by DONALD JUSTICE A SECOND-HAND ELEGY; FOR DOUGLAS DICKEY, PFC., USMC by MICHAEL ANANIA AT A MARCH AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR (LATER VERSION) by ROBERT BLY ON BEING ASKED TO WRITE A POEM AGAINST THE WAR IN VIETNAM by HAYDEN CARRUTH HOMELESS COMPLEYNT by ALLEN GINSBERG IN THAI BINH (PEACE) PROVINCE by DENISE LEVERTOV WEEPING WOMAN by DENISE LEVERTOV WAITER IN A CALIFORNIA VIETNAMESE RESTURANT by CLARENCE MAJOR |
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