Poetry Of Witness Analysis

In the excerpt from Forche’s Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, she explores a prominent issue within poetry: the presence of two distinct poetic categories, the personal and political, both of which, she claims, produce bias. In the first paragraph, Forche distinguishes between the “personal” and “political” bias, claiming one is too emotional, while the other too divisive. Consequently, she introduces the concept of “poetry of witness,” in which one’s personal and political viewpoints have less influence on the poem’s central message. However, this style of poetry is fairly uncommon due to the abundance of bias in society. For instance, the second paragraph suggests that, because the United States does not experience extreme legal or political
Forche proposes “the social” as a third category intended to dodge both spectrums of bias. According to paragraph three, “the social” helps individuals “avoid some...residual prejudices” (Forche, Twentieth 3). Lastly, poetry of witness serves as a vital form of documentation, which may “[exist] for us as the sole trace of an occurrence” (Forche, Twentieth 3). Poetry of witness comes from a poet’s obligation to write an account for those who can not see what the poet encounters. In Forche’s poetry of witness piece “The Colonel”, she conveys the motif of communication through vivid imagery and specific descriptions of her experience with the colonel. Specifically, the “human ears on the table” symbolize the disconnect between the government and the citizens of El Salvador (Forche, “The Colonel” 17). As the citizens are suffering through a civil war, the colonel’s family enjoys a “rack of lamb [and] good wine,” while calling upon their maid for “green mangoes, salt, [and] bread” (Forche, “The Colonel” 9-11). After the colonel “[spills] many human ears on the table,” he gives Forche a violent message for the American people.