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Introduction to Poetry | | |
 Commentary - Author/intention
One further point to cover before ending our study of the poem is to look at the author of it. Here
the author is presented as 'anonymous'.
Usually when we come across this in a book it means that the author is unknown or that the poem or story
has been handed down through
the generations and the original author has been forgotten.
However, this is a relatively recent poem - it must have been written after the event it describes -
and as we've seen, it is a result of a series
of deliberate choices from the line endings to the words and images. The poem deals with an event where
the people on the ground were
themselves anonymous victims of the bomb dropped from thousands of feet above, where those who dropped
the bomb never saw the
individual faces of the victims. Modern warfare like this can be anonymous and therefore the use of
this title by the author seems to be the
last choice made in the poem.
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