The Year I Turned Twenty-one
lying in farmer Farr’s roundtop barn
thunder too far away to hear
you could read a newspaper
by the sheet lightning sixty miles away
light flickering
artillerymen firing mortars
fingers in their ears
fluttering shadows of warfare coming near
I lay safe at the edge of harvest
wheat for bread for the country
drove the truck to the elevator
regarding farmers’ wives who worked in factories
at machines sewing men’s slacks
eligible for the draft
old enough to vote after
many years as a child
_____________
Bruce Parker
Review by William Welch
Parker’s “The Year I Turned Twenty-one” recalls some of James Wright’s poetry. The vivid quality of the description in the first stanza is evocative and sets the tone of unease that pervades the rest of the poem. The first line of the second stanza suggests that the speaker, despite the fact he feels “safe,” is along with the men “old enough to vote” like wheat, on the verge of being “harvested” “for the country.” Without making an overt political statement, this poem successfully draws our attention to the ways in which people are subjected to (and commit) violence, reduced by those in power to an equivalence with disposable commodities.