What Were They Like? (1967). Detailed description

“What Were They Like?” first appeared in The Sorrow Dance, published in 1967. A few years later it also appeared in To Stay Alive (1971) along with several other previously published poems, including “Olga Poems,” “Life at War,” and “Tenebrae.” She explains in the preface that she included the already published material in To Stay Alive because she began to see them as steps toward a larger work dealing with political, social, and ethical concerns. Seen in two different contexts, “What Were They Like?” spans the years of Levertov’s most focused political protest against the war in Vietnam. As a part of The Sorrow Dance it illustrates her burgeoning interest in the poetics of social activism. To Stay Alive, however, represents the height of Levertov’s outcry against violence in Vietnam, making “What Were They Like?” also part of her most potent efforts to increase awareness and effect change through her writing.

As an author who experimented with poetic form, Levertov always sought a structure natural to the content rather than a structure prescribed by tradition. “What Were They Like?” exemplifies her freedom from convention by adopting an unusual organizational device. Rather than separating the poem into typical lines and stanzas, she uses questions and answers. The poem requires us to try out different reading tactics that we might not otherwise consider. For example, reading the poem line by line may prove difficult because the questions easily slip into the background while we are making sense of the more elaborate responses. Readers may find it more useful to proceed by reading each response directly after the corresponding answer. By forcing readers to reevaluate their reading strategies, the poem’s structure suggests new or alternative methods to approaching particular problems.

The interrogative structure complements the poem’s somewhat journalistic tone and may remind readers of the pervasive media coverage of the Vietnam War. A concise and formal diction marks the questions, while the passive voice in the answers (“It is not remembered,” “the bones were charred,” and “It was reported,” for example) creates a distance by neglecting to assign certain actions to anyone in particular (Poems 1960-1967 234). However, by including alliterative lines and descriptive images, the poem avoids becoming mere journalese. Levertov manages to combine the standardized language of news reporters with a heightened poetic awareness that captures an aspect of the war that many media cannot express.

Rather than taking the angle of facts, statistics, or government policy, Levertov draws attention to the violence waged against an entire culture. Each answer details a particular part of the culture lost to war, from the possibility of laughter asked about in question three to the characteristics of speech asked about in question six. The sixth and final answer leaves a particularly poignant impression by describing the remaining voice of Vietnam as an “echo.” The people cannot speak through the rubble of their war-torn country and culture. The poem ends in silence, emphasizing the very thing against which Levertov’s protest poetry struggles. “What Were They Like?” does not restore Vietnam’s culture, but it does draw our attention to the loss of that culture. By approaching the subject of war in an unconventional way, the poem creates an opportunity to raise reader consciousness and increase public sympathy.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Several of the answers address the anonymous questioner as “Sir.” Why would Levertov include a gender-specific title for an otherwise unidentified speaker? What does the gender specification suggest? Notice also that answer five mentions fathers and sons in response to the question about an epic poem. Do these indications of gender add or detract from the poem’s overall effectiveness?

2. The last question asks whether “they distinguish between speech and singing.” Explore the relationship between speaking and singing. What do you think the poem suggests by relating the two? How does the relationship function to construct an image of the Vietnamese people?

3. Read Levertov’s poem “Life at War,” which appears in the same two collections as “What Were They Like?” and also describes violence in Vietnam. How do the two poems differ? Do you think they accomplish the same thing or two different things?

4. Find a recent news article about war or some other form of organized violence, such as terrorism. Compare and contrast the language in the article to the language in “What Were They Like?” Do the two different genres of writing convey the same information? How do the two pieces of writing affect you as a reader differently?