Carolyn Forche The Colonel Analysis

The Colonel Carolyn Forche’s “The Colonel” instantly catches the eye. The poem was written in 1978 while Forche was working in El Salvador, and retails a merciless meeting with its title character. The Colonel is a hard man in a violent world, and he cares not for the rights of the people he governs nor the fact that he is exposing his evil nature to a poet: as he says, “something for your poetry, no?” (Forche, 597). The poem reinforces this effect through its stark irony and short poetic flourishes, its outer appearance, and the length and terseness of its sentences. The Colonel is about as subtle and friendly as a brick wall, and thus the poem about him looks like one. The intent of the “The Colonel” is to describe the nature of this brutal