First Poetry Response: 1943

This poem really stood out to me just by the name 1943. Being one of Langford's students I knew this was a pretty important year. 1943 was during WWII, and one of the things we learned was that of the American troops, that were involved, many were very young and inexperienced, and that’s what I think the poet was trying to portray. The poem starts off by talking about the high school auditorium and the heavy weight finals, and then quickly transitions into death of one of the heavyweight competitors in Tarawa (place of war in WWII). “In high school auditorium Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died in the third wave at Tarawa.” With that I think the poet was really trying to show how quickly these boys were taken from the easy going life in high school to loosing friends to war in a matter of months. The poet also uses milk as a metaphor for youth too. He compares it to the care free days at home in Connecticut from when they were boys, to the intense scary days on the surf in war with frostbitten feet like milk, still boys, not knowing what to do. When a boy is young, thinking of the good old days with milk is a happy memory, but then when still a boy at war things change, and things aren't so easy-going anymore. Also, about the poet’s style I noticed that Hall used periods only at the end of a statement about war. When talking about home, the subject eventually changes to the war part and that’s when the sentence complete. At the end of the day, the poem was really interesting, and it was nice to read a poem that I had an interest in the subject, and knew the background that went along with it.