Images in W.D. Ehrhart's "Not Your Problem"

The third stanza produces a more clear image. You can imagine a ground that produces dust. This kind of ground is dry and barren. The narrator says that the dust "rises like smoke" (4). Image a land that produces rising smoke – it is probably burning or has been on fire. Either way, something has been destroyed.

This image is also a negative image. Think about your feelings of a completely dusty, barren land. Then think of how you would feel in a land that is or has been on fire and the fire has developed enough that it creates rising smoke. Most of these feelings are going to be negative, depressing.

The second half of this same stanza works with the first half (you know this because of the semicolon). The narrator explains that the "we" are "[laying] down in mud" (6). How do you feel about this image? Why do you think the people are laying in the mud? Perhaps they have to sleep there because there is no where else to sleep. Maybe they are hiding and they have to lay in the mud to hide. Whatever you imagine, you should get a negative feeling here.

The last part of this same image states that the people are "dreaming" or wanting the earth to be dry; they want "dust" (7). You know that the people do not have dust or dryness because they just laid down in the mud, but they want the dryness. The previous part of this image tells you that the ground is dusty to begin with, dusty "like smoke" (4), but when it rains, the people are in the mud.

Imagine the feelings you would have in this situation; you are nearly suffocating because of all of the dust and want some rain to wet the dust, but it rains so much that the dust becomes mud and then you want dryness to dry the mud. This image shows that there is too much of one thing or the other. There is no happy medium. The people are unable to have normal ground where they can live without choking on dust or drowning in mud. When one comes, they wish for the other. Such is the extreme of their conditions.

Poetry is like film: the pictures help you identify the meaning of the work. Images, a vital part of film, are often a vital part of poetry. Learning to use

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