COMMENTS FROM CONTEST JUDGE MARIE KANE:

The poems in this age group were difficult to judge because their maturity and excellence were so similar. I read and reread these ten poems many times, wrote comments, and read them aloud to determine the winners. Poets who employ precise imagery, display a mature voice, take risks with form and language, and creatively use poetic devices usually place in the high school portion of this contest - "Barrage" is no exception. This prose poem's pacing, imagery, excellent diction, and understated tone make it a winner in this contest.

While the idea of a 'prose poem' may seem a contradiction in terms, it simply reflects the poem's style. Written with no line breaks, the poem displays poetic qualities like all well-written poems. Imagery, repetition, sound devices, compression, rhyme, meter, and any other poetic convention appear in prose poems. Essentially, its difference is visual and cosmetic; poems may have many line breaks, a few, or in the case of some poems like this one, none at all.

"Barrage" is powerfully, and appropriately, told in third person. The distance between the voice of the speaker and the unnamed soldier and mother in the poem lends a more formal and believable tone. The damage that war inflicts on its soldiers and their families and the hold it has over them when they return are expertly delineated in the poem. We feel the poem's truth through its use of resonant details that describe war's impact on one unnamed soldier and his mother, who can only watch his suffering. The poem effectively alternates from the actions of the soldier, to his mother's response to those actions.

The opening lines of the poem introduce war's impact on the soldier: "He yells at fences a lot. He thinks he can take them down the way he does in his sector. His boots hit the metal with the same thunder his Sergeant's lungs hold." With these forceful lines, we see that war still lives with the soldier. The Sergeant "yells" and thinks he can take "fences" down with his "boots" and "thunderous voice" as he once did "in his sector." I especially admire the muted tone in the poem. There is no need to use emotion or exaggeration when telling this story; the simple details of the poem are emotional enough.

Next, the speaker explains the mother's reaction to this 'barrage' of emotion from her son at the "fences":

". . . . . . . His mother watches from behind lace
curtains. She stands in the kitchen like she always has, stirs the spaghetti sauce as the basil
spirals to the bottom of the pan."

The ever-present figure of the mother who cooks comforting food and watches her son rail at fences becomes an important symbol of love and futility in this poem. She can only make meals and view his distress from a distance; she cannot stop his emotional upheaval.

The poem returns to the soldier who "points his shoulder forward like a rifle. He lets his blades collide with the metal until he drops against the barricade." Without an actual rifle, the soldier uses his shoulder blades as such, "collid[ing] with the metal until he "drops" to the ground "against the barricade." Visually and emotionally disturbing, this brief and powerful language describes a soldier home from a war who is now recreating it.

This has upsetting effects for his mother. She "sees this, watches him slump to the grass the way he used to after little league games." Many poets would not use both "sees" and then "watches" back to back, (the words do, after all, pretty much mean the same thing), but fortunately this poet does. It is vital that the mother "see" her son, then "watch" him. Not only does the word "watch" relate to viewing a little league game as a parent sitting in the stands, but it also affirms that the mother must watch her son now as he rails at fences. The reasons for the son's two "slump[s] to the grass" couldn't be more opposite - one due to the end of playing a game as a youth and the other due to recreating a real-war battle as an adult - but the dutiful mother of this soldier must watch both of them and not turn away.

Next, the poem goes on to describe the effects of the war on the son and mother: "She holds garlic in her hands in place of the son who won't allow her to hug him." What an incredible line! That war's trauma leaves emotional numbness and distance is explicit. The mother cooks and watches, holding a spoon and garlic, but not her son.

The next description of the son is devastating: "He lies face up on the ground and fists the lawn beneath him; he lets the tremors of the war he'll go back to shake him." Note the matter-of-fact way this shocking information of going back to war is given - casually, at the end of a sentence, taking the reader unawares. This restraint displays the poet's maturity.

The end of the poem focuses on both the mother and son. The mother "watches, and chops onions as an excuse to cry" while the son "spirals to the bottom of the pan." The mother sees what war has done to her son, knows he will not allow her to comfort him, and realizes he cannot comfort himself - what else can she do but cry? The son seems to have given up, or given in, and like the basil the mother stirs into the sauce, he "spirals to the bottom of the pan."

The title of this poem, "Barrage," relates to war and the mother's emotions. The soldier in the poem is 'bombarded' with memories of war, 'attacks' the fence, as an 'onslaught' of memories of taking fences "down they way he does in his sector" arise. The mother's 'outpouring' of emotion as she watches her son "fist the lawn beneath him" causes her to cry. They both experience a 'salvo' of emotion that creates distress, as most likely the reader will also - as this one did.

The writer of "Barrage" demonstrates superior restraint. It is a knowledgeable poem of the cost of war - for those who fight in it and for those they leave behind. The understated tone serves to make war's impact even more disturbing. Everything occurs soundlessly, almost helplessly, in this very effective poem. The adept skill this talented writer displays should definitely continue. We need to hear more from this gifted voice.

Thank you for the privilege of reading your work!

Marie Kane
Final Judge, Sarah Mook Poetry Contest
engmrk@aol.com