An Argument: On 1942

I thought this was a very interesting poem. As Vendler says in her introduction, it shows that "not all members of the social group share the same attitudes." I can picture the poet sitting down to interview his mother about the Japanese internment camps, and her waving it away and trying to explain why it's not important. She (perhaps like the rest of the country, mostly then but also now) wants to forget and pretend it never happened: "Why bring it back?" But is this because it really was no big deal ("mostly we were bored") or because the memories are painful to recall ("And when the last was peeled, / clamped tight her lips, growing thinner and thinner")? It is clear that the poet and his mother disagree over the importance of discussing this piece of history.

I also was interested by how the poem is set up in a sort of one-way conversation, showing only the mother talking except for the italicized bit at the beginning that she interrupts (perhaps the poet's proposed poem that his mother rejects). Then, the breaks between stanzas are where the poet makes a comment or asks a question, unheard by the audience. This omission emphasizes the mother's attitude over the son's. It also suggests that the mother is in fact arguing with herself, trying to convince herself that it was all in the past.