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verse, line breaks can come at the logical end of a
thought or sentence, as, for example, in line 14.
This is known as a rhetorical line break. More
common, however, in this poem and in free verse
generally, is the use of enjambment, in which lines
are broken in mid-thought or sentence so as to
break the rhythm, unsettle the reader, and act
against, or react in interesting and unexpected
ways with, the sound or sense of the poem’s pre-
vailing emotional thrust or logical argument. One
example of enjambment occurs in lines 10-12: “He
seemed drunk / And we asked him Why / Had he
and this junk ... ” The word “Why” at the end of
line 11 seems a natural stopping place, as if the
narrator and his fellows are asking the soldier why
he is drunk. But although the line breaks there, it
does not end, and the reader is carried unexpect-
edly around the corner to what turns out to be a
very different question—the question, in fact, on
which the entire poem hinges. By using the tech-
nique of enjambment to vary the length, rhythm,
and meaning of his lines, Dugan skillfully manip-
ulates his readers’ experience of those lines and of
the poem itself in his quest to “transmit a power-
ful emotion verbally.”
The effect of beginning and ending the first
sentence of the poem (lines 1-8) with the words
“the river” has already been discussed in detail. But
that is by no means the only technique worth not-
ing in that sentence. The second line, “dead horses,
dead men,” echoes Lewis Carroll’s famous poem,
“Humpty Dumpty.” The allusion is ironic, juxta-
posing readers’ memories of a beloved rhyme from
childhood with a scene of battlefield carnage. But
the irony runs deeper still, for the events of
“Humpty Dumpty” are not as innocent or childlike
as readers may remember. That poem tells of a
“great fall,” after which “all the king’s horses” and
“all the king’s men” could not restore the shattered
Humpty Dumpty to wholeness and life. The same
is true in the aftermath of the Battle of Granicus,
and after World War II as well, when not even the
words of poets like Dugan can mend what has been
broken.
Although the poem is written in free verse, it
does contain some rhymes. The rhymes are clus-
tered in lines 10-16: “by” and “Why”; “drunk” and
“junk”; “us” and “Granicus.” They fall in the cen-
ter of the poem, and are preceded and followed by
unrhymed lines. Dugan uses these rhymes to inject
a new element into his poem at the same time a
new character, the soldier, appears. Just as the
rhymes upset the established rhythms of the poem,
so, too, does the arrival of the soldier upset the
rhythms of the shepherds’ lives. Yet although the
soldier continues speaking for the rest of the poem,
the rhymes end at line 16. Dugan is suggesting that
great events and personages of history, like the Bat-
tle of Granicus and Alexander should be seen as
ephemera, neither more nor less meaningful than
all the other, seemingly insignificant events sur-
rounding them. In theCompostinterview, Dugan
speaks of his poems as a “meeting place between
the unconscious, emotional flow of words and the
conscious demand for an intelligent search for or-
der in the universe. The two things being at war
with each other. The war between the unconscious
flow and the conscious desire, this is what makes
the language of poetry.”Historical Context
“How We Heard the Name” was written in 1956.
Since Dugan served in the military during World
War II, the shadow of that global conflict hangs
over the poem. The poem is concerned with and
impacted by events subsequent to the end of World
War II, just as the poem is “about” events taking
place after the Battle of Granicus.
The United States emerged from World War
II in a position of strength. Indeed, the conclusion
of the war marked the beginning of a period of un-
precedented cultural, political, economic, and mil-
itary expansion for the United States. The Soviet
Union, too, emerged from the war as a great power.
By 1956, with the Soviets in possession of the same
nuclear capability as the Americans, it was clear
that the two countries, with their competing sys-
tems of government, were the most powerful rivals
in the world. Because the consequences of a direct
conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were
too risky to be purposefully provoked, the two an-
tagonists waged a different kind of war, one that
became known to history as the Cold War.
During the Cold War the two superpowers bat-
tled each other indirectly, sometimes entering into
combat themselves but never face to face. When
Communist North Korea, viewed by the United
States as a Soviet satellite, invaded South Korea in
June 1950, for example, the U.S. responded by
sending General Douglas MacArthur, one of the
great generals of World War II, to beat back the in-
vaders. A stalemate was assured when Communist
China sent their massive army into the war on the
side of the North Koreans. In 1956, Hungary, an
Eastern European country that had fallen behindHow We Heard the Name