Letter To Matthew Olzmann Analysis

The poem written by Matthew Olzmann, “Letter to Matthew Olzmann from a flying Saucer” is a 25-line poem that contains no stanza breaks. This poem is written in the arrangement of a letter from himself to himself to weigh out some critical decisions in life. In poetry this is known as an epistle. Matthew is changing the way he is thinking and viewing the world, but it is not without discord. The struggle he is dealing with is between a higher power which could be perceived as his family who wants to bring him back to their way of thinking. The tension rises within him until he has to sit down and write a letter to himself and decipher what he should do. The way the character feels during this poem is perplexed. Matthew wants to grow into this …show more content…
We recognize this in lines 4-6 “What we’re saying son, / is you keep skipping like a stone across a pond and we need/ that to stop.”. The way this sentence structure is formatted demonstrates the frustration and seriousness that the power experiences with this issue. We see this through how the power deliberately breaks down what it 's trying to insist through an exceedingly broad description in line 5 “skipping like a stone across a pond” to encompass all issues, but then uses enjambment to slow down and in line 6 demand the direct point of how the power needs “that to stop.” This enjambment helps set the scene for how serious the power is when it comes to our speaker changing. The power even demands from the speaker in line 5-6 to “let the light/ bring you home” again this enjambment takes a broad statement to encompass all the new changes our power does not agree with and is particularly specific with saying our speaker needs to let the light bring him home. This gives us that sense that maybe our speaker has become defiant to the power and is changing his view of how he was raised. For instance, some will say that this letter is aliens talking to a young man. I however like to see this story as a power struggle between a young man’s inner thoughts, challenges and struggles with his family’s way of thinking. This family 's way of thinking …show more content…
For instance, this can be seen in the crime we are witnessing with police officers attacking black individuals. He could have been raised to believe that the police are always right; however, now he is in school, he is exposed to different ideas and realizes that maybe the police are not always right. He may realize that racism is a problem and needs to stop. He is uncovering an abundance of new ways to perceive different situations. When his parents figure this out they begin to persuade him back to their own reality. We can witness this when the power begins arguing in lines 10-11 “There are things in your skull, son, / that do not belong to you, thoughts you can’t explain.” In other words, the speaker’s new way of thinking is genuinely not his thoughts. They are thoughts impelled to him by others. He is persuaded to believe that the thoughts he is having are not rational. This individual with power even talks about getting rid of these thoughts from one of the more forceful ways such as extrication. Extrication exhibits such a dominant feeling it coerces the reader to feel how disturbed the power is with the speaker’s new thoughts. Some of these new thoughts could again be those against racism.
The word racism evokes a feeling of discomfort in people. When people hear the word racism, it arouses feelings of hatred, terror, sadness, loneliness