REVIEW
September 2017
UNDERSTANDING "TO BUILD A FIRE" BY JACK LONDON
Jack London describes death in a way that I have never read it before. "To Build a Fire" is, ironically, incredibly chilling. Unraveling the few remaining hours of a traveler's life as he journeys through the unforgiving cold of the Yukon, London opens the story in the middle of a man's exhausting trek to the sanctuary of a nearby camp, the promise of warmth. London follows this man, step by step, giving detailed yet eloquently written depictions of the environment in which his two characters are placed: the man and a lone sled dog. This short story focuses most dominantly on two things: the man's understanding of the environment and the state of his physical body in the merciless tundra, and the tundra itself, mainly the temperature.
Throughout the story, London uses an interesting narration style, giving the reader direct insight into the main character's thought processes and feelings (although almost none are depicted as emotional) while still successfully achieving a camera-like sense of third-person objective point of view. The reader is not only observing the scene at hand, but is clued into the mind of the individual moving through it. As a result, the reader is also given an advantage. We can see what's coming. We can see the very specific flaws in the thoughts and actions of the traveler, we can understand him as arrogant and naïve, we can even come to predict his future, to know that his death lies in the journey ahead. After all, his inability to understand the environment in a way that was anything but observational ultimately led to his demise.
London is extremely clever in his depiction of this character, especially so in his relation to the animal beside him. He repeatedly characterizes the man in such a way that we know his reasoning to be entirely logical and observational, given that "all this – the strangeness and weirdness of it all – made no impression on the man" (3). But the animal, the "brute" as he calls it, is characterized as highly intuitive, judging the situations presented to it in a very instinctive manner. London, as readers may also be prone to do, almost mocks the man by leading us to believe that the dog's instincts lead to its survival whereas the man's "rationale" ultimately leads to his death.
Upon reading this story for the first time, I found that there is an incredible amount of power in it, a power that comes from London's in depth depiction of the human condition, of a logical man's inevitable fear and acceptance of death. He shows us that even the most logical and forward-thinking of people must face the same things we all do, that they must feel something. Because humans, like sled-dogs, are largely emotional and intuitive creatures, and London simply seems to prove such a point in the frozen corpse of a man in the Yukon.
YOU ARE A PART OF THIS NOW
May 2017
Elegy for James Knox by Jake Adam York
The world of poetry is one that is very new to me. Before spring of this year, I had never picked up a book of poetry over a book of fiction, for I love to be transported, to manifest the words in my mind up and off of the page, but I hadn't realized just how well poetry could do the same. Jake Adam York's work sold me on this. The poetry realm is still very new to me, and I feel always will be, but York's work in Murder Ballads exposed me to poetry that moved me in far fewer words than a work of fiction ever has.
One of the things I have learned about poets and their work is that most, if not all, are true storytellers. My love of books is strong because I am able to clearly follow their stories - every scene is painted in front of you and every detail is described in length. But poetry, especially York's, does the same in fewer words. His poem Elegy for James Knox convinced me very quickly that a poem can tell stories just as well as any book can. In this poem, York accounts the gruesome and unfortunate death of James Knox, a black man who was murdered in Alabama in 1924. What most dominantly pulls me in to the poem is how York loosely writes to his subject, James. It isn't a letter to him specifically, but it depicts the setting of his death and what led up to it by consistently using the word "you", referring to Knox, throughout the piece.
"they took you from prison"
"sold your labor, your body"
"as if you had done this to yourself"
"burn you into textbooks"
In these lines, there is a very dominant connection between Jake and James. Why write you, instead of him?
"They took him from prison…sold his labor, his body"
It doesn't work the same way does it? Why you? You speaks more to the harsh reality of the event while him starts to describe a scene that is imagined instead of real and begins to turn James Knox into "the other".
The use of you instead of him makes the poem so much more powerful. And Jake's choice to do this was not random or accidental. By doing this, he creates a very present link between himself and the being of James Knox. Given that the poem is an elegy, and one that's almost written to the person being talked about, this is a very interesting way to do things. One of the most dominant effects I notice about this method is that, as I cannot help myself from reading this poem aloud (and repeatedly), when the work is voiced, the reader is connected directly to the subject. When I read the poem, I am speaking to James Knox, I am mourning his death, I am writing this poem.
But of course I didn't write this poem, Jake just made a very intelligent and cunning decision when he chose to use "you" instead of "him". He basically allows his readers to take his place, and in doing so, subtly forces them to express sorrow for the subject, to mourn their death on a somewhat personal level, and to understand it. This method of writing, to paraphrase Natasha Trethewey, "challenges our historical amnesia" by making us involved.
The more I analyze Jake's work this way, the more I understand why I chose this poem specifically and why it affected me so much in the first place. After first having read the piece, I immediately glued my hands to the nearest available keyboard, desperately trying to find out more about James Knox. He was obviously important, at the very least to Adam York, but I craved the bigger picture. Jake wrote his poem in such a way that afterwards, I needed answers, and I strongly doubt that my resulting conviction was unintentional.
I should mention that York, for some of his poems, in order to provide some sort of context for the reader, includes very brief "biographies" of the subject of the piece. One, short sentence that aims to prepare you a little for what's to come and basically tells you that his images are based on realities, that these things are ones that have actually happened. I feel that these little details are crucial to his work. As Simmons Buntin stated in his own review of the book, "Context matters, but good poetry is not bound by it…Murder Ballads is a book where context matters" and Jake is certainly aware of the fact. In this poem specifically, Jake "told" me to start reading with the knowledge that the described events were not imagined. If he hadn't included this sort of introduction, perhaps I wouldn't have felt so inclined to find out more about the subject. By doing this, Jake makes it clear that the work is meant to hurt. He does not paint a pretty picture, but he paints it very well, and I feel that this should be a highly valued quality among poets – the ability to realize that the picture doesn't always have to be beautiful, but that the language creating it has to be carefully chosen.
This is not a poem you walk away from, and here I find a very interesting part of poetry. A lot of writing in our world is created for the purpose of escapism. We primarily consume content as a means of getting away from our everyday lives, "escaping" something. But Jake's poem puts a hand in two categories that ultimately contradict each other, escapism and realism. And I absolutely treasure this quality when I find it written so well. When you read Elegy for James Knox, you are escaping something; Jake is transporting you to a world and image that is not the one currently surrounding you. But the interesting thing about it is that the content of this elegy immediately grounds you. He uses these two methods in remarkable tandem with each other, taking you away to a historic event in time, but simultaneously grounding you in your present, making you even more aware of your current surroundings as well as others' past ones. His language is carefully chosen, but it seems his methods of depicting past truths are picked even more carefully than originally anticipated.
Author's note:
I'm so curious, have you read the piece? Do you feel the same? Did you also research more about James Knox? The story, or rather reality or history, is extremely disheartening. But in a time when the people's voice is loud and protest is very present, this country's history has become a great source of motivation. More than ever, we want history not to repeat itself, because when it does, the realities are harsh ones, as Jake has eloquently pointed out to us, or rather, pointed out to you.