178 Poetry for Students
outcomes of the battle despite his seeming indif-
ference to it.
A reader can also shed light on “How We
Heard the Name” by considering it in light of
Dugan’s body of work. Specifically, critics have
noted that it is characteristic for Dugan to comment
on of society using restrained language and wry
humor. In this instance, he filters a historical event
through the voice of a speaker who is indeed un-
sentimental, who looks warily upon the “official
acts” of government. Compounding the matter, the
speaker then encounters one who is downright em-
bittered, the soldier who presents himself to the
speaker not quite straightforwardly, but rather
through a riddle (“this is a joke / Between me and
a man / Named Alexander”). Moreover, the reader
is witnessing a historical event unfold from the out-
side in, a kind of reversal typical in Dugan’s
poetry.
“How We Heard the Name” is also quite pos-
sibly a commentary on certain events of the twen-
tieth century. One could imagine a similar situation
unfolding, for example, in China under Mao, the
Soviet Union under Stalin, or quite possibly in an
earlier America. Those who inhabit remote regions
are on the fringe of the great social upheavals, and
do not necessarily ask for them, yet feel their im-
pact nonetheless. It is dubious that the speaker in
“How We Heard the Name” was craving to be ab-
sorbed by Alexander’s empire. However, the events
of history go by as the river does. As the speaker
declares “that is the thing about the river,” the
reader could imagine that through this poem Dugan
is making a similar statement.Source:Erica Smith, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.Pamela Steed Hill
Pamela Steed Hill has had poems published in
over 100 journals and has been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize three times. Her first collection, In
Praise of Motels,was published in 1999 by Blair
Mountain Press. She is an associate editor for Uni-
versity Communications at Ohio State University.
In this essay, Hill discusses how “How We Heard
the Name” uses allusions to Alexander the Great
to warn against the human tendency to make he-
roes of battle leaders and to force readers to look
at the evils of war, no matter how glorious history
has made it out to be.
Dugan’s first collection, Poems,contains sev-
eral works in which war plays a major role, in-
cluding “How We Heard the Name.” Dugan spent
World War II in the Army Air Corps, and that ex-
perience inspired much of his early poetry’s
themes, especially the notion of humankind’s blind
acceptance of the evils of battle. As in most of his
work, the characters in “How We Heard the Name”
are fairly flat, and the language is conversational
and unadorned. Lacking the flash of unusual im-
agery and explicit descriptions, though, does not
lessen the poignancy of this poem. Instead, its
strength lies in the searing sarcasm that Dugan em-
ploys to take a shot at one of history’s most
renowned heroes: Alexander the Great. However,
it isn’t just the ancient warrior and leader himself
that comes under the poet’s critical tongue, but all
those who have made a “god” of him and who only
perpetuate evilness by remaining ignorant of its hu-
man source. “How We Heard the Name” is essen-
tially an extended metaphor that is both cautionary
and chastising: it warns that people should give sec-
ond thought to whom they call “great.”
To fully appreciate the poem, it is necessary
to understand its historical references. The Battle
of Granicus, fought in May 334 B.C., was Alexan-
der the Great’s first of four major battles he would
fight and win in his military career. It was also the
one in which he came closest to failure and death.
Alexander ascended to the throne of Macedonia, in
Greece, at the age of twenty, after the death of his
father, King Philip II. Being schooled in the ways
of military tactics since he was a young boy, he
quickly proved himself a fierce and capable leader
going into battle. This was most evident when he
led his troops across the Granicus River in Asia
Minor and surprised the Persians who had expected
the Macedonians to take a different route. AlthoughHow We Heard the NameThe poem takes its
most stinging shot at the
historical hero in the last
two lines, which tell that
those ignorant enough to
believe the heroic tales of
embellished history are little
more than fools, or ‘ba-
bas.’”