181. Internal Wars Comments

Tenor + Vehicle = Figure of speech So theorized I. A, Richards, whose views haunted my English major studies. In this poem you create a vivid VEHICLE in the precisely pictured details of an almost Homeric battlefield; without graphic details you still made the murderous nature of warfare real. But TENOR it seems you are leaving it up to your readers to draw that conclusion. So here goes: the key line is EVERY MAN WITH MY FACE, so the narrator who says he thinks his side will win could just as well say he thinks his side will lose, These INTERNAL WARS are really infernal in the way they do so much damage to self. I wonder what would constitute of truce? Or would both sides reject a truce immediately? My feeling is they would reject one - fighting is too much an ingrained habit of the inner self. (Woody Allen says in MANHATTAN, I don't show anger, I turn it inward and get tumors.)