Working Poem- In Creve Coeur Missouri

I have decided to do my first blog on In Creve Coeur, Missouri  by Rosanna Warren. This poem is found on page 127. This poem shows the work of a fireman and an amateur photographer.  In this poem a fire has taken place in Creve Coeur, Missouri. While the firemen are fighting this fire an amateur photographer begins to take photographs. This poem describes what is happening at the time of a photograph was taken. The speaker describes the fireman as he holds the child. One thing I found interesting was the choice of words used to describe the body pulled from the fire. The writer describes the body as “impossible laundry that was pulled too soon from the line” (Warren 127). I found this interesting because it was a very descriptive view of the photograph that was going to be taken. It is much more elaborate and has a stronger connotation than just saying that the child was limp and pale.

The next stanza describes the embrace of the fireman and how the fireman leans into the child’s face. The most interesting line in this stanza was “She is naked, she has no name” (Warren 127). This makes a reader think. I believe that this line means that she is no longer breathing or soon to be deceased. I have come to this conclusion because the next part of this poem states “No longer a baby, almost a child, not yet a ghost”, which is a very impacting thought. It is interesting that this choice of words used here were probably meant to mean that the rescued victim that was in the fire was a young child or toddler (Warren 127). This very young child was not yet declared dead. For the final picture, the child pressed her fist to the fireman’s chest. Then the young child’s head falls back into the fireman’s hand as she dies. The writer shows the hopefulness that the child will survive by saying, “Tell us that she will stand again, quarrel and misbehave” (Warren 127). The writer has made a creative way to show this emotion of hopefulness. She speaks of not just the good of the child standing again, but that she will misbehave and argue again. The fireman tries to revive the child through CPR. The poem explains how the fireman has to perform CPR to bring people back to life and how he has done it time and time again. Now this time he is trying to revive this child as well. In the last stanza of this poem, it is revealed that the photograph won a prize but the child did not survive.

One thing that I learned from this poem is how hard the work of a fireman would be. I also found this selection to show the work of a photographer and a fireman. It incorporated the importance of the fireman to a fire victim and how their response to the wounded can change a life.

I used the dialectic journal to analyze different parts of the poem. I found this tool to be very helpful. It helped me slow down and consider the meaning of each line of the poem. It also helped me to make assumptions about the meaning of certain lines and the overall meaning of the poem. Using the dialectic journal allowed me to consider why certain words were used to be more affective. I found this poem to be very impacting and visual because of the creative way it was written. 

Warren, Rosanna. "In Creve Coeur, Missouri." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. By John Schilb and John Clifford. Fourth Edition ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 127. Print.