What Were They Like? - Denise Levertov Context Flashcards
Explain the purpose of the poem
• “What Were They Like?” illustrates Levertov’s political concerns; here, her interests lie in questioning, quite literally, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam
o The poem itself is little more than a list of six questions and answers. The questions come forth from a voice almost childlike in design and naïveté, while the answers solicited are dismissive and irritated in their tone and content
o In this unusually structured poem, Denise Levertov makes the reader think about the effect war has on the population and culture of a country, with specific reference to the Vietnam War (1955 – 75). Although she is critical about the way a nation and its culture could be disregarded, this is done very subtly through the way the poem is set out.
o There are clearly two speakers in this poem (the questioner and the responder) but it is not immediately clear who they are or what attitudes they have. The questioner could be a reporter, an army officer, a tourist, an anthropologist or any number of other people. The responder’s identity is also not clear; s/he might be a Vietnamese person, a junior soldier, a tour or museum guide or a student. How you ‘read’ the questioner and responder characters will affect the way in which the attitudes and themes within the poem are revealed. The first speaker, for instance, may be curious, annoyed or calm; the second may be polite, sarcastic or upset. Try reading the poem using different combinations of tone to get this effect.
o Underneath all of this, however, is the poet’s voice. Levertov writes her poem with a sense of sadness. Loss, regret and even anger also run subtly throughout the poem.
Explain the meaning of the poem
• The questions show concern for the loss of knowledge about the Vietnamese people, but they are by no means of an outwardly political or journalistic nature
o Rather, the persona, which seems youthful but is not, asks questions germane to a deeper understanding of the culture of Vietnam: What were their religious mores? What made them laugh?
o Can the person answering the questions tell the persona anything of their literature?
o The persona seems aware that the idea of Vietnam might already be lost or be in the process of being expurgated rather than studied or illuminated
• The responses, while not terse, are stultifying and try to obviate the discussion. They are also sarcastic in tone, as the responsorial voice twists the wording of the questions to mock the person asking them
o For example, when the questioner asks whether the Vietnamese used stone lanterns, the responsorial voice declares that the Vietnamese people held light hearts that had turned to stone
o In this dismissal, the respondent echoes and amplifies the idea that, even if any of these questions had once been germane, most of this otherwise arcane knowledge has long since been forgotten
Examine Levertov’s portrayal of US military policy
• American military policy is illuminated here as destructive and unconcerned with the collateral damage of the war brought about by its tactics
o Frequently mentioned are allusions to fire, burning, bombing, and the charred remains of a people and their civilization
o Given Levertov’s political stances, it is almost self-evident that the respondent’s voice is to be vilified as destructive and genocidal, as it is more concerned with reporting the decimation of the Vietnamese people than with knowing anything about them
o The ultimate answer of the respondent is that it is impossible to know these people now, as they are largely silent and forgotten
