Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "At Yorktown", Charles Olson evokes a landscape haunted by history, where the dead are woven into the natural world, and time itself seems to dissolve within the layers of soil, grass, and memory. The poem’s setting, Yorktown, carries profound historical significance as the site of the decisive American Revolutionary War victory. Olson uses this context not to recount events but to meditate on how the physical land absorbs, reflects, and transforms the remnants of human struggle, creating an ongoing dialogue between history and nature.

The poem’s structure, divided into numbered sections, allows Olson to explore Yorktown through various lenses, each section building upon the image of Yorktown as a convergence of human history and the natural world. In the first section, Olson sets the scene by listing elements—the church, the dead, the grass—each part inseparable from the place and each carrying its own history. The repetitive use of “at Yorktown” emphasizes the sense of place, anchoring the reader in a specific location where the “earth piles itself in shallows,” evoking both the physical landscape and the buried layers of time and memory. Olson’s comparison of the earth to water, “piling itself” and pooling in mounds, suggests a fluid, organic quality to the land, as if it continually shifts and reshapes itself around what it holds.

The second section deepens this metaphor, where Olson blurs the boundary between the living and the dead. Here, “the dead are soil,” and the “church is marl,” infusing the earth and structures with human remnants. This description suggests that Yorktown’s very ground is made up of the dead, transforming death into life as grass and flowers grow from the hollows where bodies lie. Olson’s imagery of “hollows” as “eyes” and “heather” as “hands” personifies the landscape, connecting it to the human form, implying that the dead still have a presence and shape in this place. Even as history becomes “flies” that “dawdle… in the sun,” Olson hints at its endurance, though detached and fading in the present moment.

The third section introduces the earthworks and the silent “scream” of the brass mortars, objects left by past violence now quieted by time. Olson describes the mortars as “weathered green, of mermaids for handles,” an image that imbues these relics of war with mythic beauty and eerie life, as if they are both part of and beyond human history. The juxtaposition of Latin inscriptions with mermaid handles creates a surreal image, highlighting the way artifacts of war often carry both gravitas and incongruity when viewed outside of their original context. This silent scream becomes symbolic of the enduring echoes of conflict, lingering without sound, haunting the landscape like the presence of history itself, visible yet out of reach.

In the fourth and final section, Olson shifts focus to the loosening of the earth by the “long dead.” Here, he portrays time as if it were a palpable force, noting how “heels sink in” to the softened ground, an image that implies both the gradual passage of time and the impact of those who once trod there. Olson’s description of a bird wheeling over an “abatis,” an obstacle used in fortifications, implies that the military past has been reclaimed by nature, where the defenses of war have become mere features in a broader, peaceful landscape. The line “time is a shine caught blue from a martin's back” is a powerful conclusion, capturing the transience and beauty of time as something fleeting, reflected in a bird’s movement, delicate and impermanent, yet perpetually renewed.

Through "At Yorktown", Olson presents Yorktown not as a static historical site but as a dynamic landscape where past and present continually intertwine. By merging human history with natural imagery, Olson suggests that places like Yorktown carry an essence that transcends events, a sense of continuity that binds the lives lost in conflict to the earth, making them part of the ongoing rhythm of nature. The poem’s tone, at once reverent and contemplative, invites readers to consider the weight of history not just as a series of events but as an integral part of the physical world, layered into the soil, grass, and air that persist beyond human lives and wars. In Olson’s vision, Yorktown stands as a testament to both the transience of human endeavor and the enduring, transformative power of place.

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