Clay West

Dr. McGuire
4 September 2014
Poetry Recitation Review
When reading Fear by John Guzlowski, I noticed a progression of tone and persona in
the narrators voice. I tried to follow this progression in the personas I adopted when reciting the
poem. This progression began with a casual conversation and ended with a haunted warning.
However, if I were to recite this poem again, I would try to be less engaging with my audience
from the beginning.
Almost immediately I sensed that the narrator in this poem, at least in the beginning, is
speaking in very casual, relatable language. There is no rhyming, and it appears as though he is
trying to make his experiences comprehensible to someone who has no frame of reference for
them. It also seems apparent that the narrator doesnt necessarily have a plan for what he wants
to tell the reader; he starts out talking about what the war consisted of, and then decides to tell
the reader what the camps consisted of. Saying that a large part of the camps was who you
worked with reminded him that only rarely did they work with women, and that reminded him
that they never made love. Therefore, for the beginning of this poem, I decided to adopt the
personality of someone talking to a listener who is genuinely interested in hearing what the
narrators experiences were like. When I transitioned from the first stanza to the second stanza, I
tried to make it sound as though I was not planning on talking about the camps; rather I was just
suddenly reminded of the differences between what defined the war and what defined the camps.

The poem seems to suggest that the narrator was suddenly reminded of this one time a
thousand men were working a field with sticks and they witnessed a group of naked women
being forced into the ovens. At this point, I felt that the persona of someone suddenly reminded
of a terrible, tragic event that they never wanted to think about again was an appropriate persona
to adopt. I wanted the audience to feel as though now that I was talking about this horrible
experience, even though I wanted to cut it short, I almost didnt have a choice and couldnt stop
myself from continuing to talk about it as the details came to me.
In addition, I wanted the audience to feel a sense of guilt and disgust from the narrator.
The narrator talks about how the women screamed and cried to us but not one man moved.
How heavily the fact that not a single man moved weighs on the narrator is demonstrated by his
continued dwelling on that fact; he cant just say it once. Immediately after stating that not one
man moved, he again states not one. He cannot just simply state that fact and move on. He
feels the need to emphasize it. Its almost as though the reason he needs to talk about this event is
specifically because his guilt and disgust at himself and his fellow men has been weighing down
on him for so long that he needs to let someone else know about what happened, maybe hear
someone tell him its ok, theres nothing else you could have done.
Finally, the poem takes almost a desperately cautionary tone. The narrator desperately
wants his audience to understand how crucial it is that if they are ever found in a situation similar
to what he went through, they dont let fear stop them from doing what they should do. He does
not want anyone to ever experience the weight of the fear that he has been carrying. He tells the
audience You will carry this fear to the grave with you. I can promise. Therefore, I adopted a
haunted persona; almost the way someone who believes that a house is possessed by some evil
spirit would beg their friend not to enter the house. The narrator knows from first-hand

experience how terrible that road of fear can be, and he wants nothing more than to warn his
audience.
If I were to recite this poem again, I would make my first stanza less engaging. While it is
true that the narrator is casually relaying his experiences to a listener, I think the narrator also
knows that there is no chance of the listener understanding what he means when he says that the
work would shove a bayonet up your ass and twist the blade until you were dead. Thus, I
would say the first stanza more off-hand, as though I was saying it on the off-chance that the
listener did understand what was being said, but that I was by no means expecting that to happen.
I would want the audience to get the feel that the narrator was telling them this more out of duty,
or because its the only way he knows how to explain it, not because he thinks it is at all relatable
to their daily lives.
The progression from casual to haunted is a natural one, brought on by the narrators
sudden remembering of a horrible event and the weight of the guilt that goes with that event. The
narrator desperately wants his audience to avoid a similar fate. However, it is important to
remember that from the very beginning of the poem, the narrator does not expect the reader to
understand his experiences. Thus, I should have tried harder to adopt the persona of someone
recounting a terrible experience out loud instead of the persona of someone trying to engage with
an audience.

Documentation: None