BradMenning

Brad Menning
 * Turning Back (2008) ** By- Dan Albergotti

 We turn back, always bowing to that urge to return, to revise, to be certain. What do we want? Everything we can never get.

Like Orpheus, we turn sharply when we think we're home free, when we should know better, when we should know Eurydice's breath

on our backs. What we get is darkness at the mouth of the cave, the flare of fingertips, and echoes of //farewell// from the depths.

Like Lot's wife, we become nostalgic. We remember the salty tinge of warm skin, the endless nights with the god of desire,

and we have to cast one last longing glance. What we get is salt in the veins and a footnote in God's grand book of ironic retribution.

Or like my ancestor Selina, we are defiant, running back into the house each time Sherman's troops set a new fire, succeeding

three times before finding flames too large to overcome. It's February, 1865, and all this fire won't make it warm. What we get

is watching our convalescent son be carried out of the house by the Union soldiers to die quietly on the open mall in a freezing gale.

Let us praise reckless acts, these fierce acts of futility. Let us always stop, turn back even when we know that some cold fate,

some heartless soldier, some angry god will be there, ready to turn us around, to send us forward, saying //Don't come back//.

Way 1: First Impressions
My first impression of this poem is that it makes no sense at all. I could not even focus on what the poem was trying to say because I was trying to think of whom Orpheus and Eurydice are. I actually laughed while reading most of the poem because it was funny how little sense this poem makes the first time you read it. After reading the poem for the first time, I knew there were going to be many things I would have to research in order to make sense of this poem, so I did. I looked up every term that I didn’t know, because I would have never been able to develop an understanding of the poem if I just read it over and over again without know much of the terminology in it. I did some preliminary research of the different terms that I didn’t know that Orpheus was a talented Greek poet and musician, who was the husband of Eurydice. I also questioned who Lot was. Lot is a man from the Bible, similar to Orpheus, he loses his wife. There is still a great deal of information I want to look up though. I think it will be important to understand who Selina is, and I want to look up information on the Civil War that might help me make more sense out of this poem.

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It is difficult to read the poem because there isn’t a clear alliteration to follow. The sentences begin and end at random spots in the stanzas and there is no rhyme scheme, which makes it difficult to emphasize important aspect of the poem. There actually isn’t a single line with different words that rhyme in the entire poem. Assonance doesn’t exist in this poem either. I discovered when reading the poem out loud to myself or when listening to others it sounds choppy. It is choppy because it is difficult to decide when to pause between lines and stanzas verses at the end of the sentences. The lack of meaning in the structure leads me to think that Albergotti wants the reader to engage themselves more into the meanings of each separate story and how they relate with each other.======

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I was not able to find anything recordings or video’s of this poem online so I recorded my own voice reading the poem. The file is located below and it will only work when using Microsoft Internet Explorer.======


 media type="file" key="Turning Back.wav"

Way 3: A Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content
“Turning Back” is a dramatic monologue, written in free verse. The poem does not have a rhyme scheme and it does not have a standard punctuation. Since it does not have standard punctuation, sentences begin and end anywhere in the stanzas. Without standard punctuation it makes it difficult to produce a specific meter. 

Way 3: Another Point about Form and Its Relationship to Content
The poem has a clear structure that breaks the stanzas up into different groups. The first group is the first stanza, which can be considered the introduction stanza. The second group is the next two stanzas which is the story Orpheus and him losing his wife. Stanzas four and five are the third group which refers to Lot’s story. The next three stanzas involve the American Civil War. After the American Civil War group the poem concludes with the last two stanzas. Realizing that there are three stories is crucial to properly analyzing this poem because they all have a common theme (losing loved ones), that is easy to see when they are separated from each other. It is most important though, to realize that the first group and the last group hold the key to the moral of the poem.

"Bowing To That Urge"
“Bowing to that urge,” is in the first line of the poem. The urge it refers to is the urge to look back. Bowing is something that is done to respect someone, or it can mean to give way to something. The author uses this metaphor to symbolize that whoever is in the poem is giving into the urge to turn back. The full line reads, “We turn back, always bowing that that urge.” This line states that if people have the desire to look back that they always will. I agree with that statement. As humans we cannot help thinking about and reflecting on our past. The first line of this poem, and specifically “bowing to that urge,” relates to the rest of the poem because it involves three different examples about how people have gone back to do something.

Way 4: Unpacking Another Instance of Figurative Language: "Salt In The Veins" 
Another metaphor in this poem is “salt in the veins.” This is not to be taken literal, it is meant to be symbolic of the hurt you feel when you lose someone you love. Before this line it refers to the “salty tinge of warm skin.” This suggests a very appealing sensation that you could experience with someone close to your, but anyone who has salt in cut knows that it is very painful. Having salt in your veins would be unbearable. This pain corresponds with the rest of the poem because all of the people who lost their loved ones experienced pain.

Way 4: Unpacking Another Instance of Figurative Language: "This Fire Won't Make It Warm" 
The last sub story in this poem contains a line that states “this fire won’t make it warm.” The last story takes place during the American Civil War, and it was a common during this war to start houses on fire. So I believe “this fire won’t make it warm” is an allegory because it could be taken literal that in February the fires aren’t big enough to keep warm. It is more likely that it actually means that there is a lot of fighting and loved ones being killed, but it still isn’t enough for the North and South to get along. This can be related to the rest of the poem because each sub story has something bad happening in it. The bad thing in the last sub story is that the two sides in the Civil War won’t get along causing their son to die on the battle field.

Way 5: Analyzing the Setting
This poem doesn’t take place in a single place or even time in history. The first story takes place in the underworld of Greek mythology. The second story takes place in a city called Sodom. The third story takes place in eastern America during the American Civil War in 1865. When I read the poem I pictured all these places to be dark and ominous. Albergotti created this dark image in my mind for all of the locations because for the first story he says, “what we get is darkness.” Even though he doesn’t specify that the rest of the places are dark, I continued to picture that in my mind.

Way 6: Identifying and Analyzing Point of View
It was difficult to determine what point of view this poem was written in. The author never uses, “I,” which initially caused me to believe it was some form of third person point of view. The author does use “we,” a lot though, which led me to the conclusion that the poem is in first person point of view. Using “we” the author is able to include more than one person in the poem. Focusing on the word “we,” causes me to be very curious about who else is part of the poem.

Way 7: Analyzing Complexity, Ambiguity, & Difficulty
The poem wasn’t a terribly complicated piece of work to read, but there are some things that a reader could have difficulty comprehending. The poem is just long enough that it makes it harder to remember how items at the beginning of the poem relate to the items at the end of the poem. One example of this is how in the first and last stanza there are similarities in sentence structure when he says, “to return, to revise, to be certain,” and “some cold fate, some heartless soldier, some angry god.” The language isn’t very hard in this poem either, because the only word that I didn’t know was convalescent. I found that convalescent means that you are recuperating after an injury. One aspect that made this poem fairly easy to read is that there aren’t any ambiguous statements in it. Perhaps the two biggest things that make this poem difficult is that it is written in Free Verse, and the different stories in the poem. Free Verse makes it harder to read the first couple of times because you constantly looking for a rhyme scheme or structure but it doesn’t exist. The stories make the poem difficult to understand, because if you don’t know what the stories are you have no way of making connections between them.

Way 8: Considering Canonicity
I don’t think that this poem has the qualities necessary to become a cannon. This poem does not posses any aesthetic quality that makes it stick out from other poems. The poem does have a small amount of cultural value because of its connections with Greek, Biblical, an U.S. stories but it doesn’t have a enough importance or a strong enough message to make it something people are going to be reading one hundred years from now. If you look this poem up on line there is almost nothing about it or the author. This poem would require more attention now, shortly after its release, in order for it to be a piece of work that could be considered a cannon.

Way 9: Biographical Context
Dan Albergotti is currently a professor at Coastal Carolina University. He has been writing poetry since junior high school. Although Albergotti is 44 years old he is considered an emerging poet and has had his work published in several journals, and he has won awards. He thinks creating poetry is similar to making soup, in the fact that it is important to let idea’s simmer for a while. Many people believe his work to have a Christian theme and when he was confronted about it he was quoted to say, “please don’t call me a religious poet, because I ain’t one.” One item he said that will help me explore “Turning Back” was, “I find that it really energizes me when I have different world to inhabit at once, rather than trying to work toward only one goal.” In “Turning Back,” there are several worlds and religious influence, so knowing what his attitude towards these items are gives me a better idea of how to interpret them.

Way 10: Historical and Cultural Contexts
Orpheus and Eurydice were husband and wife in Greek mythology. Ironically, Orpheus was the chief of poets and musicians, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the poem. More important to the poem was that he lost his wife while trying to save her. Eurydice died from being bitten by snakes and descended to the underworld. Orpheus convinced Hades to let Eurydice go, and Hades allowed Orpheus to take her on one condition. The condition was that he had to walk in front of her and not look back until they were both out of the underworld. Orpheus was able to walk all the way out of the underworld without looking but as soon as he entered the normal world he looked back to see Eurydice, but she wasn’t out yet and she was gone forever.

The story about Lot is similar, because he loses his wife forever too. His story is from the Book of Genesis. Angels came to Lot and said that he and his family had to evacuate the city they lived in because God was going to destroy it. Lot didn’t want to go but the angels eventually force them to leave and as they do the angels warn them not to look back. Once they are out Lot’s wife looked back at the city and turned to a pillar of salt.

In the third sub story of the poem takes place during the American Civil War. In the poem it actually says it is February of 1865. There are two items that make more sense in the poem if you are knowledgeable about the Civil War. The first item addresses “Sherman’s troops set a new fire.” Sherman was a general for the Union army, and it was common practice to set houses on fire as they raided villages and demolished the plantations. Watching the “convalescent son be carried out of the house,” was common for two reasons during the Civil War. The son would be convalescent, which means nursing an injury, because he was hurt while fighting but they would take him out the house and make him fight anyways if Union soldiers found a Union comrade. If they found an injured Confederate soldier he would likely be hauled out of the house to be killed.

Way 11: Theoretical Application
A psychoanalytical interpretation of this poem would ask how the characters in the poem justify turning back while knowing the severity of consequences. Freud thought that there are three parts of the unconscious, ego, superego, and id. Superego is supposed to keep id in check, because id is a person’s primal instinct. I believe weak superegos are the reason that that the characters in the poem take the actions they do, because the id part of their conscious was controlling their actions. I believe looking back is something all humans must do whether it be physically to see what is behind us, or psychologically to reflect on things from our past.

Way 12: Another Theoretical Application
A feministic application of this poem reveals that the poem is meant to be empowering to woman. If you ask how the last two stanzas relate to the rest of the poem, and especially how the last statement relates to the rest of the poem. In the three sub stories of the poem each woman was punished by “some cold fate, some heartless soldier, some angry god. All of the examples in poem are to say that there is always going to go be something against you, so you should always keep trying and never give up. That is way the last line says, “to send us forward, don’t come back.”

Way 13: Unifying Interpretation
Analyzing this poem has been a great experience for me. Before this project I had never looked into a single piece of literature in such depth. As it says in Way 1: First Impressions, I literally laughed when reading “Turning Back,” by Dan Albergotti for the first time. I thought there was no way I would be able to find any meaning in this poem, but by going through the twelve steps before this I have gained a great understanding of this poem. My interpretation of this poem is that it was written to instruct the reader to acknowledge foolish acts, but still move on and learn from them.

I discussed previously that the statement, “bowing to that urge” is a figurative statement of giving way to something. So at the very beginning of the poem it states that we always give in to the urge to look back at what we’ve done. The poem then states, “What do we want? Everything we can never get.” What we want when we reflect on our past failures is another try, but obviously that is something we cannot do. So the poem gives three stories of other peoples failures and what they got. It is in the last two stanzas that lead me to believe that this poem is made for motivation.

As I stated in way three the last two stanzas conclude the poem and is where the moral of the poem is. The first sentence says, “let us praise reckless acts, these fierce acts of futility.” Albergotti wants us not to look down upon these actions but encourage them. These action will come with repercussion, in the poem it was “some cold fate, some heartless soldier, some angry god” and reminiscing about these will allow you to make better decision and move on.

Work Cited:
Brown, James S. and Scott D. Yarbrough. __A Practical Introduction to Literary Study.__ Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc., 2005. “Lot (Bible).” 30 Jul. 2009. Wikipedia.org. 25 Jul. 2009: . “Orpheus.” 30 Jul. 2009. Wikipedia.org. 18 Jul. 2009: . “Interview with Featured Poet Dan Albergotti.” __Towncreekpoetry.com__. 2008. 30 Jul. 2009 .

