Manners

How you deliver the message is a matter of manners. If the message is particularly strong, something the listener doesn’t want to hear, then manners must dictate the form. The poem is addressed to anyone who has picked up a weapon and decided to go into the wild with the purpose of killing an animal for game. David Wagoner chose to address a hunter, politely but with the firm cautionary voice of a stern Shaman. 

He speaks nine charms to delay the hunter from killing an animal for game and make him aware of the consequences of the hunt. The severity of each charm builds as the poem progresses. Numbering, verse separations and comments on the poem below are mine, not Wagoner’s.

Nine Charms against the Hunter - David Wagoner

1. (Wagoner forces a long breath punctuated with the quick breath after the dash.)

In the last bar on the way to your wild game,

May the last beer tilt you over among friends

And keep your there till sundown—failing that,

2. (Soft consonants)

A breakdown on the road, ditching you gently 

Where you may hunt for lights and a telephone.

3. (Soft consonants)

Or may your smell go everywhere through the brush, 

Upwind or crosswind.

4. (The fourth charm follows the short quieter lines with a loud crunch!)

May your feet come down 

Invariably crunching loudly on dry sticks.

5. (After four short sentences a long series breaks the mood with soft vowels ending with exploding “B” of buck fever.)

Or may whatever crosses your hairlines—

The flank of elk or moose, the scut of a deer,

The blurring haunch of a bear, or another hunter

Gaping along his sights at the likes of you—

May they catch you napping or freeze you with buck fever. 

6. (Soft rhythm in the first line to prepare the reader for the “knock” in the second line.)

Or if you fire, may the stock butting your shoulder

Knock you awake around your bones as you miss,

7. (Lots of  hard consonants - d,r,s,k,t’s to punch out the rhythm.)

 Or then and there, may the noise pour through your mind 

Imaginary deaths to redden your daydreams:

Dazed animals sprawling forward on dead leaves, 

Thrashing and kicking, spilling themselves as long

As you could wish, as hard, as game,

8. (The P,L,L,U,G punctuate the like stabbing the animal.)

And then, if you need it, imaginary skinning,

Plucking of liver and lights, unraveling guts,

Beheading trophies to your heart’s content.

9. (The slow rhythm of the first three lines prepare the listener for the final image.)

Or if these charms have failed and the death is real,

May it fatten you, hour by hour, for the trapped hunter 

Whose dull knife beats the inside of your chest.

The first five charms have mild consequences - drinking with friends, fumbling in the dark looking for help,  the hunter’s smell warning off the animals, or falling asleep. But the sixth charm knocks the hunters bones awake, and the message becomes deeper, drilling down toward the final truth - the trapped hunter, Death, beating out his time inside the chest.

This week Professor Pinsky provided examples of poems whose messages were shaped into their forms, Ben Jonson, or whose shape was determined by the message, Walt Whitman.  David Wagoner’s “Nine Charms against the Hunter” is a case of message and form welted together. What seems at first to be quiet and conversational, becomes a profound challenge to the listener worldview.   Wagoner’s intent is a Shaman’s intent-  to cause a magical change in the listener’s understanding of the world. 

Wagoner is a writer sincerely influenced by Christian thought and belief. He is a Christian Naturalist. Reading his poems, I am reminded of Saint Francis’s Canticle of the Sun. Wagoner intends the hunter/reader to be brought to conviction, to change his path, to be transformed by the magic of the words, to form a new relationship with nature.  

The poem is a quiet, one-sided conversation. A difficult warning spoken politely. What is not heard has gone before. I imagine two men sitting in a bar or dinner; one announces that he will be going hunting tonight. The second man is older, during his life was has hunted. I knows the details. Moments before the animals’ death, force that must be used to finish the kill, remove the head; for him the game is no longer game; he at some point connected his little life to a larger awareness of what is alive. 

Is it strange to say, that I experience the poem as an expression of deepest friendship for the hunter? A poem is a song sung in the music of voice and words. On first reading, I experienced the poem as magical song. I was changed. I saw things differently. I had found a friend who would speak the truth to me.