168 Poetry for Students
tone is conversational, musing, but also matter-of-
fact. The narrator of the poem is reporting some-
thing to his listeners. As the poem’s title suggests,
it is the story of how the narrator and his friends
happened to hear a certain name for the first time.
The first two words and the last two words of the
sentence are identical: “the river.” This embeds a
circular structure within the linear flow of the
poem, like an eddy spinning in a direction oppo-
site to the prevailing current of a river. Even as the
poem runs on past the end of the first sentence, the
echo of “the river” works in the reader’s mind to
return them to the beginning of the sentence.
Between the appearances of “the river” is a list
of items carried downstream in the current: “Dead
horses, dead men / And military debris, / Indica-
tive of war / Or official acts upstream.” The narra-
tor and his fellows are standing on the bank of the
river watching as the carnage of war drifts by. Their
attitude is reflective, as if what they are seeing
doesn’t really involve them: “But it went by, it all
/ Goes by, that is the thing / About the river.” No-
tice the juxtaposition of simple, direct language that
conveys the grim reality of slaughter—“dead
horses, dead men”—with abstract language that re-
moves itself from the bloody reality of war: “In-
dicative of war / Or official acts upstream.” Such
stark juxtapositions of language and imagery are
one of the primary ways that Dugan infuses his
poem with irony. Poetic irony, according to the de-
finition offered by Babette Deutsch in Poetry
Handbook: A Dictionary of Terms,is “a statement
that contradicts the actual attitude of the speaker or
a situation that contrasts what is expected with what
occurs and always having overtones of mockery.”Lines 8-14:
Suddenly, in the midst of this liquid conveyor
belt of death, comes life: “Then / A soldier on a
log / Went by.” Curious, the narrator asks the
drunken soldier what has happened: “Why / Had
he and this junk / Come down to us so / From the
past upstream.” There is something comical in the
image of a drunken soldier clinging to a log, yet
this touch of the absurd is another ironic juxtapo-
sition; it underscores, rather than erases, the im-
pression of casual horror Dugan is carefully devel-
oping. Here, for the first time, the river is explicitly
linked to time in the phrase “the past upstream.”
This phrase has a multitude of meanings. From the
perspective of the narrator, upstream literally
equals the past, not just in time but in space, for
once something reaches him from there, whatever
event set it in motion has already taken place. Butit also refers to time itself, and to history. If time
is the river, then history is simply “this junk” car-
ried downstream in the flow of time. Remember
Dugan’s artful suggestion in the first eight lines of
the poem that the flow of the river may be circu-
lar as well as linear. If the river of time can also
flow in a circle, then history will inevitably repeat
itself. Dead horses, dead men, and drunken soldiers
may go drifting by, but sooner or later, in some
sense, they will return.Lines 15-20:
From this point, the soldier seems to take over
the poem. The narrator’s voice is not directly heard
again. Yet this is essentially an illusion; it should
not be forgotten that the soldier’s words are being
recited by the narrator as they were originally spo-
ken to him and his friends along the banks of the
river. It should also be remembered that just as the
narrator is concealed behind or within the voice of
the soldier, so, too, is Dugan, the poet, hidden be-
hind the voice of the narrator, and the voice of the
soldier as well. Although the soldier addresses the
narrator and his fellows as “Friends,” it is clear that
his attitude toward them is far from friendly. His
words are fairly dripping with contempt and irony:
“The great / Battle of Granicus / Has just been won
/ By all the Greeks except / The Lacedaemonians
and / Myself.” What can his listeners on the river-
bank know of the Battle of Granicus, the Greeks,
and the Lacedaemonians, let alone the identity and
personal history of this soldier who refers to him-
self with such an air of embittered self-importance?
Their knowledge or ignorance is irrelevant to the
soldier, for he is primarily talking to himself here,
as bitter, self-important people often do. But just
as the soldier’s audience may be mystified by these
terms, so, too, might Dugan’s contemporary audi-
ence be unfamiliar with the Battle of Granicus and
the Lacedaemonians. In a sense, then, Dugan is ad-
dressing the readers of his poem with the same con-
tempt and irony the soldier lavishes upon his audi-
ence. The difference, and it is an all-important one,
is that Dugan’s readers are free to educate them-
selves about these terms and the history to which
they refer. In fact, Dugan provides the clues they
need to do so and thus enter into a deeper under-
standing of the multiple ironies of his poem.
A quick check of any encyclopedia will reveal
that the Battle of Granicus was fought in 334 B.C.
between the armies of Alexander the Great and the
Persian Empire. The meaning of the soldier’s words
is clarified by the fact that Alexander’s forces were
made up of soldiers drawn from all the Greek city-How We Heard the Name