Robin Coste Lewis 'Poem From: To'

Robin Coste Lewis’ poem “From: To:” is English sonnet with 14 lines divided into quatrains and ending with two couplets. Lewis eschews the conventional rhyme scheme of the English sonnet and instead favors the use of enjambments to add nuance to the poem. The speaker of the poem is a narrator because they describe a marginalized group of people who are given temporary permission to have a voice. This is done through the use of poetic devices, imagery, and allusions to past outrages in order to elucidate a picture in which hypocrisy, ignorance, and complacency all combine to form a piece of propaganda. With a title that reads like a postcard, conjuring up a scene: Black soldiers posing in a photo-op for the press. “From: To:” is at its core, a poem about communication, about who gets to communicate, and …show more content…
The first line ends with an enjambment with the word “dark”. This is important because it adds ambiguity as to who the poet is referring to as being the “murderous lunatic” and given the poet’s emphasis on race relations, it could be taken as a sardonic nod to the way African Americans were scrutinized by society at the time. This goes well with the line that immediately follows “to whom” completing the first two words “At last”, and thus providing the syntax that implies that “they” (the black Americans) have had encounters with murderous lunatics in the past, yet were unable to respond, until now. Line 10 mentions soldiers who lack a “clear mirror of grief”, with the enjambment that ends with“...They find some” which implies that they go on to find some realization of the farcical nature of their photo shoot. To add to the past indemnities motiff, an enjambment occurs at the end of line 11 “...while one loads, one lifts,” which calls to mind slave labour, and is juxtaposed over soldiers who are preparing for a photoshoot that enhances the prestige of a country that has enslaved them in the