176 Poetry for Students
But is he correct in this attitude? The shep-
herds are not quite as unsophisticated as Mem-
non believes. This fact is revealed in the first sen-
tence of the poem, when the narrator uses the
ironic phrase “official acts” as a euphemism for
war. Far from being naive or stupid, these shep-
herds possess a wisdom that comes of long ex-
perience with the “official acts” of men such as
Alexander and Memnon. The shepherds are like
the river itself, timeless and enduring: “ it all /
Goes by, that is the thing / About the river.”
Would-be gods and conquerors are ephemeral
events in the lives of these men. Alexander’s in-
vasion may temporarily upset the flow of their
lives, just as the detritus of war upsets the flow
of the river, but this effect is not likely to be a
permanent one. Dugan had introduced rhymes to
show how the soldier’s arrival broke the rhythm
of the river and the lives of the shepherds. Those
rhymes do not continue through the remainder of
the poem. On the contrary, they disappear almost
at once, like the ripples of a stone tossed into a
stream will spread out for a while only to vanish
as if they had never existed at all.
The narrator speaks for more than just the
shepherds, however. Note that he does not ask
Memnon why he has come floating down from up-
stream. Instead, he asks, “Why / Had he and this
junk / Come down to us so / From the past up-
stream.” That is a curious phrase, “the past up-
stream.” Many poets have likened the flow of a
river to the flow of time, and Dugan is availing
himself of this common metaphor. In a sense, it is
literally true, for the events that have taken place
upstream have happened in the immediate past of
the shepherds. But Dugan is also talking about the
way in which the past flows down through time to
influence the present and the future. Even more
specifically, he is talking about how Alexander the
Great set out to conquer the world and wound up
dead at the age of thirty-three.Dugan, himself thirty-three, is reminding him-
self (and his readers) of the perils of vanity. One
of the intentional ironies here is that simply by writ-
ing his poem, Dugan sets himself apart from the
shepherds and aligns himself with Alexander. A
poem is, in a sense, like a monument erected to
withstand the ravages of time, and few figures from
ancient history were more determined to raise en-
during monuments to themselves than Alexander
the Great.
Source:Paul Witcover, in an essay for Poetry for Students,
Gale, 2001.Erica Smith
Erica Smith is a writer and editor. In the fol-
lowing essay Smith examines the poem’s depiction
of warfare and the idea of individual conscience.Alan Dugan’s poem “How We Heard the
Name,” from his volume Poems(1961), begins
with a startling image: “The river brought down /
Dead horses, dead men / And military debris.” In
these few terse lines the speaker has successfully
situated himself in a precise place (near a river)
and moment (after some kind of battle or other mil-
itary event). Furthermore, the allusion to dead
horses suggests that the poem takes place some-
time in the past, when mounted soldiers were com-
mon in warfare.
In the next lines the speaker offers an inter-
pretation of what he sees: that the debris is “In-
dicative of war / Or official acts upstream.” Al-
though he is witnessing horrific sights, including
decaying carcasses, the speaker does not display
great emotion regarding this apparent destruction.
Instead, he keeps a detached and ironic tone,
drolly wondering about “official acts”—presum-
ably of those in government. He seems cynical re-
garding the actions of those in power. The reader
is left to wonder whether the speaker sees himself
as impacted by, or accountable to, those who gov-
ern him.
The speaker’s subsequent comments summa-
rize his feelings regarding the ravages he sees. His
mood is more of resignation than of pure indiffer-
ence: “But it all went by, it all / Goes by, that is
the thing / About the river.” The speaker’s concerns
seem to be cosmic, rather than mundane. He is sug-
gesting that whatever comes to pass, no matter how
catastrophic, is ultimately impermanent. The river
takes on a greater meaning, too: it stands for the
passage of time. A river, like time, is always mov-
ing. A river has literally washed away the remnants
of a battle, and over time the emotional impact of
the battle will diminish. The speaker’s intuitive
knowledge that all things are fleeting can be seen
as a sign of maturity and insight. It may also indi-
cate hardship, for these sights of death are not con-
sidered unusual by the speaker.
The action of the poem moves on when the
speaker notices a soldier drifting down the river on
a log. For the first time in the body of the poem
the speaker suggests that there are companions with
him, citing “we”: “we asked him Why / Had he and
this junk / Come down to us so / From the past up-
stream.” The soldier, like the speaker, is in theHow We Heard the Name