Anne Rouse

Springfield, Virginia

Colonels live there, commuters to the Pentagon
In sweetly-named estates: King’s Park, Orange Wood.
Springfield proper is a set of asphalt lots,
A catch-all town for realtors and mail.

At Peoples Drug, and the fast-food joints,
The hands popping open cylinders of change
Hail from Vietnam or Nicaragua, arrivistes
Wondering at the sourness of God’s people.

The high school kids who used to do the jobs
Were white, immune to history;
Andy Sulick, sheepish in a Big Ranch Stetson ha,
A row of enforced dim smiles at Burger Chef.

Eight hundred graduated in ’71. That night,
Crawling the backroads, jumping in and out
Of unfamiliar cars, I found a party at a shack.
A boy mashed me against the lean-to floor.

Along the wooded road lighting bugs flared
Like drunks with matches, seeing their way home,
And whipperwills nagged the sleeper
Until a dawn as pink and blue as litmus paper.

That is from her first book. It was my high school. I couldn't tell you if Andy's name was Sulick, but there was an Andy and Anne knew him. I don't know how you managed without that information.

Comments

[Claire Jones]

Could you please tell me how to find some info on this poem? thank you.

[stephen williams]

I am trying to find some info on Springfield, Virginia as I have to teach it to a not-particularly-inspired 16-year-old for his exam.I think it's about looking at the place where Anne grew up as it is now and remembering what it was like when she graduated there, with recent U.S. history/ involvement in Vietnam & Nicaragua but the references are too vague and personal to know exactly what she's getting at. Can you help?

Thanks Steve Williams, Leeds, Yorkshire

[Yana]

Could you tell me what is the intention in writing this poem? What is the mood/tone of the poem? How is the tone created by language effects?
thank you i really have difficult to understand, please help me.

[abida dar]

springfield, virginia i need some help about this poem my exams are really close plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz m waiting

WHat is it you would like help with?

[Daisy Cole]

Hi,
Please help me i don't understand what this poem is about and my exam is on Friday, so i'm really paniking. All the other poems i have to reveiw have been really interesting and easy to understand but i just don't understand this one.

[nazmun]

please if you have any info on analysing this poem

[jasamcd]

I went to West Springfield High School and graduated the same year as Anne. Andy Sulick was a friend of mine. He was a great guy. And he had a sheepish look whether he was wearing a stetson hat or not.

West Springfield was a upper white middle class suburb of Washington DC. Many of the fathers commuted into Washington DC where they worked. There were many military and government families and Springfield had more than its fair share of colonels, including my father.

As a commuter town, Springfield lacked a soul. In effect, it was created to house commuters. It had not evolved as a town from historical beginnings. Social life for high school kids focused on the fast food shops and other local convenient stores such as Burger Chef and People's Drug Pharmacy Store. It was surrounded by a relatively poor Virginia backwater which time had left behind, mainly wooded countryside with winding country roads. And it was there that the kids could go to escape the supervision and morals of their parents, such as on graduation night.

The children of these upper middle class families felt immune from the tragedies of the Vietnam and Nicaraguan wars going on at the time, spoiled without having to work hard for their money. For the class of '71, the Vietnam War and the draft was ending in the nick of time to save most of them from having to fight there.

And although they represented the conservative christian majority, the communities had little exposure to minorities, such as refugees from the wars, and possibly some of them preferred it that way.

[Sally Lillis]

Andy Sulick was my brother. He was, indeed, a great guy with a wonderful sheepish grin. He died of a rare cancer in 1987, at age 33. When clearing out our parents house recently I spent a number of days reading a diary of his and letters to and from him - and looking at photos of him in the many places where he traveled in his life. I miss him, and I always will. Anne's poem about Springfield paints it like it really was in 1971. Their graduation in 1971 took place outside...in a torrential downpour.