A Monument to be

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border         

         One always hears of the appreciation and honor that goes towards the great fields of battle, the fields where soldiers have laid down their lives, and the fields where victory was paid in a hefty fine of bloodshed. But one never hears of the fields where history never left its terrible mark. No one ever takes a moment of silence to honor the fields where nothing of significance has ever happened. At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border by William Stafford shows insight into the appreciation that goes to historical battlefields, but how no one appreciates the fields where nothing of significance has ever happened. 

Typically, when a poem is written about something like a battlefield or monument, it talks about everything said battlefield or monument is. This poem talks about a field where nothing happened and everything it isn’t. William Stafford appears to be the speaker and it appears as though he can be speaking to anyone (including himself.) Using this, Stafford conveys the salient point of how appreciation is put into fields of conflict instead of fields of peace. By the tone of the poem and the statement, Stafford is implying that this is wrong and more people should appreciate the fields of nothing.

The poem is structured into two stanzas with an odd pattern of rhyming. The rhyming scheme for the first stanza is the first line rhymes with nothing, the next line rhymes with the last, and the two in-between lines rhyme with each other. The second stanza is similar, but a tad different. The first and the third lines rhyme while the second rhymes with nothing and the last two rhyme with each other. This shows that there’s truly no dedicated rhyming structure to the poem and is actually quite difficult to let the rhythm flow when reading it.

Being as short as it is, the imagery is still fantastic. One can bask in the fresh air and nature of the field as he describes its birds and grass. Upon describing the fields of battle, one can only think of places such as Gettysburg and Antietam. One must think of everything he or she knows about such places and the little everyone hears about the tranquil places free of battle and bloodshed. It’s heavily implied that these are the places for monuments, the virgin grounds deserve the recognition as they are becoming rare. The flow of the poem is changed in a few different ways. The first and second stanza are not only separated by spacing, but by subject matter as well. The first stanza spends more focus into what the field is not by talking of soldiers and battle while the second talks only of the field that battle ignored. The flow is also hard to trace due to the rhyming nature of the poem that, odd enough, changes in the stanzas. And lastly, the flow is interrupted abruptly in the second stanza by a pair of dashes.

Although lacking length, At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border offers a powerful message about what humans perceive as glory. Through a few carefully places sentences, Stafford manages to convey that humans should value the lands of peace and nature, not the ones of battle and bloodshed.