Black Woods, by Kevin Prufer, is a poem that is written about a missing boy. It is written in a way that you have regular type in the form of a question about the missing boy with italicized answers to the question. Dispersed throughout the poem are caesurae, or empty space. These take the form of brackets with periods in them, giving you the hint that there is something missing, a complete statement that fills in the gaps. You are not told what is supposed to be in those brackets. Upon reading the poem a couple of times you are enticed to fill in those blanks yourself in order to give the poem more meaning.
Reading this poem, you would want to believe that the poet’s voice (big V) seems to be coming from a place of sorrow, as someone who may have lost a child in the past. Upon doing a bit of research on Prufer, I have found that is not the case. Prufer writes his poem by looking at history and the work of historians and then masterfully uses his voice (little v) to place you in a situation where you can imagine yourself there. To quote Prufer from an interview in a March 2012 issue of The Kenyon Review, “I am almost completely unable to write about myself; my urge is always away from me and toward fiction or history or some combination of the two. I began this poem thinking about the ancient practice of exposing unwanted infants – that is, abandoning them to the elements, where they would likely die.” He did admit in the interview, though, that as he wrote the piece, he realized that it was about the loss of a parent, taking him back to when he lost his own father.
Black Woods is written as a persona poem, which is from the perspective of someone other than the author. My take on the poem is that it is being told from the perspective of a grieving parent, possibly self-medicating and a bit delirious, wandering the house and making statements to their spouse. The questions that are being asked are a bit pointed and I feel that the primary character blames the italicized character a bit for the loss of their son, especially in the end when the question is asked “Is he trapped inside you?… Is it black woods in there?” Those statements make me feel as if the italicized character may have some darkness to them, real or perceived.
This poem is written with a large amount of theatrical irony, meaning that the audience has access to information that the character does not. What is special about the irony in this poem is that not only does the reader have that extra information, but we actually get to decide what that information is based on what we truly feel the poem is about. Using the caesurae, we are able to explore our own feelings at the time of reading and dictate what the topic of the poem is. We can certainly insert the words “he is dead” or “he is gone” into the brackets and turn this into a story of grief and tragedy, feeling deeply for the characters’ loss, but we may feel, based on our own experiences or what we are going through at the time, that the main character might have a substance abuse issue that the italicized character is used to dealing with and is just placating him/her. We can insert the words “he’s playing at the park” or “he’s next door eating a hotdog” and the poem takes on a whole new meaning.
I admit that coming into this class, I knew next to nothing about poetry. I often did not understand it and I certainly did not know how to properly read it. Before our lessons I
would have read Black Woods and just ended the poem with a blank expression, not understanding anything about what I had just read. Learning about personification, theatrical irony, and especially those magical little brackets of caesurae, I was able to read this poem again and again, really getting something out of it each time. It has become beautiful, not only for the message in the poem, but for the masterful way that Prufer is able to use his craft. In a small space, he is able to tell a giant story that anyone can interpret to fit into their own narrative.
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