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eerie echo of Lewis Carroll’s “Humpty Dumpty”)
and phrases (“the river” begins and ends the first
sentence of the poem). Another example is to be
found in lines 6 and 7: “But it went by, it all / Goes
by” echoes a final time in line 10, then suddenly,
unexpectedly, breaks that rhythm by the introduc-
tion of rhymes—“junk” and “drunk,” “by” and
“Why,” “us” and “Granicus.” He does this to un-
derscore the importance of the soldier: just as the
rhythm of the poem is jarringly broken by the use
of rhyme, so, too, will the rhythm of the narrator’s
life, and the lives of those he speaks for, be broken
by the soldier’s arrival, which heralds the arrival
of another.

To appreciate this aspect of the poem, it is nec-
essary to know a little history. The soldier refers to
the Battle of Granicus. In 334 B.C., the armies of
Alexander the Great attacked and defeated the Per-
sian forces on the plains of Adrasteia after fording
the river Granicus. The soldier relates that the bat-
tle “Has just been won / By all the Greeks except
/ The Lacedaemonians and / Myself.” Alexander’s
armies were drawn from all the city-states of
Greece, with one exception—the Lacedaemonians.
The Lacedaemonians, better known as the Spartans,
refused to fight under any but a Spartan general. In
truth, their refusal was politically rather than mili-
tarily motivated; the Spartans feared (quite rightly)
the loss of their independence in Alexander’s em-
pire. But who is this mysterious, self-important sol-
dier who states that the battle has been won by all
the Greeks except the Spartans and himself, and
goes on to explain, “This is a joke / Between me
and a man / Named Alexander.” Surely, no com-
mon soldier would speak with such bitterness and
intimacy of the great Alexander. The fiercest fight-
ing in the Battle of Granicus was between Alexan-
der’s men and Greek mercenary troops in the pay
of the Persians. The mercenaries were led by a
Greek general named Memnon. History records
that Memnon escaped the slaughter of his merce-
naries that ended the battle; thus, readers may rea-
sonably conclude that the nameless soldier is none
other than General Memnon himself, in the act of
fleeing the vengeance of Alexander in a rather
undignified fashion. Alexander, then, is “the name”
referred to in the title of the poem.

But what about the “we”? That riddle, too, is
soon solved. Memnon scornfully refers to his au-
dience as “ba-bas.” This is an example of the po-
etic device known as onomatopoeia: that is, the use
of a word whose meaning is indicated by its sound,
which replicates the sound of the thing it represents.

Here, “ba-ba” suggests the bleating of sheep. Mem-

non is addressing a group of shepherds. They be-

come the targets of the bitterness and contempt he

feels both toward himself, as a defeated general

who has abandoned his men, and toward Alexan-

der, the victor and would-be god. And in fact, just

as Memnon predicts, Alexander declared himself

to be divine soon after the Battle of Granicus,

though this self-proclaimed apotheosis did not pre-

vent his death just over ten years later, in 323 B.C.

It is worth noting that Alexander was thirty-three

years old when he died, the same age as Dugan

when he wrote this poem.

Memnon’s attitude to the shepherds is plainly

one of superiority. Even though he has been de-

feated by Alexander, Memnon is still better than

those lining the river and watching him drift by.

Memnon is a man of action, used to being at the

center of things, possessing knowledge that, he be-

lieves, will forever change the world of the shep-

herds. Even as Memnon disparages Alexander, he

takes pains to assert his closeness to the would-be

god, as though he, too, is a god.

How We Heard the Name

What

Do I Read

Next?

• Dugan’s New [and] Collected Poems, 1961–
  1983,published in 1985, is an indispensable re-
  source for anyone interested in Dugan’s devel-
  opment as a poet.


• Readers interested in Alexander the Great will
  find Robin Lane Fox’s 1994 biography, Alexan-
  der the Great,an engrossing read, almost more
  like a novel than a history book.


• A classic study of Alexander from a military
  standpoint is J.F.C. Fuller’s The Generalship of
  Alexander the Great,reissued in 1989. The au-
  thor’s account of the Battle of Granicus is es-
  pecially well done.


• An amusing and moving interview conducted by
  J.C. Ellefson and Belle Waring with Dugan ap-
  peared in the May 1990 issue of the American
  Poetry Review