Dec 29, 2009

The War Against the Trees | Summary

Stanza 1: The poem opens with a man and his neighbors watching bulldozers tear up the man’s lawn. The man is joking with the neighbors, and the event is referred to as a “show.” The man’s upbeat behavior suggests that he has sold the land for a good price. “Branchy sky” indicates that this parcel of “lawn” has quite a few trees on it, as the branches seem as much a part of the sky as of the tree. Contributing to the carnival-like atmosphere is the personification of the bulldozers as sloppy males on a date, who, “drunk with gasoline,” force themselves on the...