Poem Review: Carolyn Forché - The Colonel

Carolyn Forché

For today’s poem, it’s one I read in college. It’s a prose poem by Carolyn Forché who appears on The Poetry Foundation. 

Well, the prose poem follows the sinister nature of a Colonel from El Salvador in May 1978. We catch glimpses of his family as our main character enters the manor with a friend: 

“//His wife carried

// a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went 

//out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the //

cushion beside him. //

This piece opens with a domestic action in how his wife carries in a coffee and sugar (which denotes sweetness even though the rest of the poem is much darker) while then his daughter was filing her nails. His son is out for the night. Then the image of a pistol creates tension throughout the rest of the piece. The father is a tyrant or “Colonel” in this case. 

The striking image of a “moon swung bare on its black chord over the house.” To me a moon could represent a head, and the black chord could be an execution and hanging. Which is common with tyrannical leaders. 

There are also broken bottles that are embedded in the house, which “scoop the kneecaps from men’s legs…”

Food is then made prominent in the piece: 

// We had // dinner, a rack of lamb, good wine, and a gold bell was on the table for // calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country.

Essentially, we are seeing the Colonel’s tactics by wining and dining his guests. He gives a rack of lamb, good wine. The gold bell for calling the maid shows the hierarchy in that home. The gold painted bell shows wealth.

My favorite line from the piece is when we see the parrot:

The parrot //

said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed

// himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. //

The way in which the friend has to speak through body language is exceptionally written. The colonel is a flawed tyrant who we only get glimpses of in violence. The most important image of the piece are the many dismembered ears the colonel has and the floating one too.

The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries

// home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like //

 dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one //

 of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water //

 glass. It came alive there.

This is the section we see the most brutality with the image of ears as dried peach halves. Another use of food but also a rather morbid image. The fact that she makes the Colonel drop one in order to have it “come alive” really enhances the poetic undercarriage of the full story. 

The final line: 

// Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some //

of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the //

ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. 

I am sure this is fictional but I'm sure it's embellished if based on true events. The Colonel is asking our main character if she will write about him. Write this into her poetry. It is the scrap of his voice and the ears on the floor pressed to the ground. These are striking moments of the ears catching what the Colonel is saying as though still attached and still alive.

Overall, I find this prose poem to have captured something shocking. A domestic villa with a hidden underbelly of insanity like a house of horrors. It is a work of building suspense. We are given this character study based around all these images that provoke a lot of understanding of the villainy of the Colonel. I had a great time with this poem and recommend it. Perhaps I need to start writing prose poetry again!

• CM