Poetic Interiority in Rose Macaulay’s “The Shadow”: Contrasting Civilian and Soldier Experiences in World War I

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eyes

eyes blink eyes blink eyes

blink blink blink see me – she sees me –that’s too alive and she’s not –

stop – she’s not alive if she was i’d be – stop –

just play just play; tic tac toe two truths and a lie truth or dare why do so many of these want the truth it’s not – it’s not – don’t go there – rockpaperscissorsrockpaperscissorsrockpaperscissorsshoot; no that’s not right – that’s not how you play you’re doing it wrong – not right you have to go on shoot, on shoot you play –shoot i –on shoot on shots you die i die i did i did one letter one letter one letter just e to d just change e to d that’s it present-past dying-dead gone, he’s gone –

he shot me he did my chest

he split my heart in four with bullets he made four hearts four hearts four holes two new bullet homes in my vertebrae i don’t know i don’t know where the others went –

red-fire fear-choke blood-drown gasping, hiccup on the sticky juice drown in the gun barrel metallic lightning metal pierce pulsing-throbbing-beeping in skin a heart monitor a hospital a heartbeat a heartbreak those are all h words here’s another –

hate

she sees she’s scared run run run hahahahahahahhaahahahahah haha hhaha h – i couldn’t run i couldn’t he got me too quick doors slam books fly wind screams past sticky hiccups past wet gasps past whys and how could yous and i love yous shattering my teeth rotting the walls inside out pest there’s a pest there’s a thing in my house why can’t i have this house it was ours it is mine after what he did to me here

POETIC INTERIORITY

in Rose Macaulay’s “The Shadow”: Contrasting Civilian and Soldier Experiences in World War I

Written by Mariel Matsuda Illustrated by Lauren Bale

Rose Macaulay’s poem “The Shadow” explores the experience of civilian uncertainty, trauma, and helplessness during World War I aerial bombings, focalizing the interiority of civilians. Impressionist techniques of onomatopoeia and sparse diction elucidate trauma’s impact on civilians, marking their distress as inarticulable. The anticipatory dread of civilians awaiting an encroaching bomb is evoked through a narrowing geographical subject. To represent the grief and entombing destruction following a bombing, Macaulay utilizes internal rhyming structures which bury their resolution within the silencing surrounding of a line. Finally, the aerial raid as a “show” metaphor is an ironic understatement, highlighting both the devastating toll of the raid’s destruction and the helplessness of the civilians who can only observe – not resist raids. In the poem “The Shadow,” Rose Macaulay employs impressionistic poetic techniques to construct an evocative portrayal of civilian experiences of wartime death and destruction, examining how civilian experiences differ and converge with the experiences of soldiers. The speaker first challenges distinctions between the soldier and civilian experience by conveying a civilian community’s claustrophobic anticipation of encroaching bombs. Though civilians are not active combatants, aerial raids force civilians to contend with uncertainty and destruction, similar to soldiers resisting attacks in bomb-ravaged battlefields. The rhyme “Blaze loud and bright, as if the stars were crashing right into the town, / And tumbling streets and houses down...” establishes an ominous, threatening atmosphere (Macaulay 67). The poem’s images grow increasingly specific in scope, from the broader classification of the “town” to the more proximate designation of its constituent “houses and streets,” evoking the dread of a “closing-in,” following the bomb’s approaching path. The more personal term of “houses” also affirms the devastating personal toll for civilians, who lose their homes and livelihoods as their neighbourhoods are torn apart like battlegrounds. As the distinction between “town” and “houses and streets” resolves with the completion of the rhyme, the distinction between battlefront and homefront becomes increasingly ambiguous as aerial raids target residential areas. Through graphic descriptions of the scale of destruction and trauma of death brought to civilian towns by aerial raids, Macaulay introduces how civilians contend with certain elements of the horror of the battlefield.