Nostalgia

I really loved “Cole's Guitar.” I was going to write about “Curfew” at first, but the overarching idea that a few distant notes on an acoustic guitar can take us to a completely different place definitely motivated me to write about this one. It’s a very simple poem to understand. Turner is stationed in Al Ma’badi, Iraq. I pictured him sleeping in a messy lobby surrounded by fellow infantry soldiers in some building. The sound of Doc Cole strumming on his guitar off in the distance wakes him up and instantly takes him back home.            Again not a very complex poem, but how it’s written is really captivating. Every line is a new memory, and a new image. “I’m in Wyoming. I’m in New York. / I’m leaning to kiss a woman / in the cornfields down by the river.” Each stanza has multiple images of America, all different, each flashing through Turner’s head. These images of home inevitably increase the overall sense of nostalgia throughout the poem. “That’s what I’m hearing, / the wind on the redwood coat.” Although they were all hearing the same notes, we don’t know what effect Cole’s playing had on the other soldiers. We follow little avenues of home that Turner could have been storing away for a while up until this moment where they were unleashed by Cole’s guitar.