The Missing (Style)

Style

The first line of a poem is considered by many to be its most important. It is the reader’s entry into the poem, introducing the work and establishing both expectation and the desire to delve further. In addition, it presents language in a pattern that is either puzzling or familiar, that mimics everyday speech or is foreign in its sound and arrangement. With “The Missing,” the reader is immediately presented with a blend of these two different modes. The diction, or specific word choices, is simple (plain words that are easily recognizable). And yet as the first quatrain (four-line stanza) unfolds, a certain pattern emerges, a rhythm strikes the ear. There are ten syllables in every line, laid out in an almost regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. In the first line, for example, the stresses alternate, falling on “Now,” “watch,” the first syllable of “progress,” “of,” and “plague.” This meter, or recurring pattern of beats, acts like an engine driving the poem and propelling the reader rhythmically through it. It is called iambic pentameter, meaning there are five (“penta”) two-beat units in each line.

In addition, there is another formal device Gunn employs in “The Missing”: an abab rhyme scheme. That means the last words of the first and third lines, and the second and fourth lines, respectively, match each other in their sounds. Most of Gunn’s lines end with perfect rhymes as in “plague” and “vague.” Others end on slant rhymes in which the sounds are similar but not precisely paired: “mass” and “embrace.” Either way, these rhymes, in combination with the meter, are the glue that holds each stanza and ultimately the poem together.

These formal elements employed by Gunn achieve other effects as well. Gunn’s poem of mortality and the death of friends never swerves toward the maudlin or overtly sentimental. The rhyme and meter help prevent this by imposing a regimen of strict control on the poem. Thus, the chaos and senseless loss the poem takes as its subject is counterbalanced, reined in by its form. The formal devices impose a sense of order and logic in the face of a threat and a reality against which the speaker is otherwise powerless. Here form attempts to tame the wild disorder of the speaker’s world.

Compare & Contrast

• 1347-1350: Black Death sweeps across Europe, introduced into the bloodstream of its victims by a bacillus carried by the Oriental rat flea. When it is over, the epidemic has claimed more than 30 million people, approximately one-third of the continent’s population.

  1918: A worldwide influenza epidemic leaves 20 million dead.

  1939-1945: World War II results in the loss of more than 50 million lives.

  2000: To date, the AIDS virus has claimed approximately 17 million victims.

• 1926-1946: Controversial theories of the origin of AIDS abound. Some scientists believe the virus spread from monkeys to humans some time during this period.

  1959: A man dies in Africa’s Congo in what researchers say was the first proven AIDS death.

  July 31, 1981: Under the headline “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” the New York Times reports that a “rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer” has been diagnosed in gay men in San Francisco and New York City. For the first time, the American public is informed of the disease that would come to be known as AIDS.

  1997: The approximate worldwide death count from the disease tops off at 6.4 million. An estimated 22 million people worldwide are HIV-positive, more than the population of Australia.

  1980: There are 422 diagnosed cases of AIDS in the United States, resulting in 31 deaths.

  1992: Although estimates place the number of cases in the United States at more than a million, there are 257, 750 diagnosed instances of the disease and 157, 637 AIDS-related deaths.

  1998: This year sees a total of 665, 357 diagnosed U.S. cases with a total of 401, 028 deaths.

  1985: Women represent 7 percent of all cases.

  1996: As the disease spreads farther and farther into the heterosexual population, that number jumps to 20 percent.