"Discovery of the New World" by Carter Revard

Sorry Mrs. Clinch but the poem will not paste on to the blog for some reason. Here is the link to it though: http://homeostaticism.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/discovery-of-the-new-world/

Carter Revard's poem "Discovery of the New World" is about an alien invasion on the human population that seems to parallel the invasion of the Europeans on the Native Americans in the Americas. The poem begins with one of the aliens speaking to a superior as he describes the humans as "creatures" who "marveled at our green skins and scarlet eyes". To begin with, green has the connotation of a lack of experience. Considering that the aliens are paralleled with the English colonists this description makes complete sense. Both of these groups of people did not fully think about their actions and the brutality of them and in this way were blinded by their desire to achieve new land. It is also interesting to note that the "creatures" or humans "marveled" at the appearance of the aliens. The connotations of this word indicate the inferiority that the humans feel in relation to the aliens. In fact, this phrase parallels the actual wording of many historians who claim that the Native Americans were astonished by the colonist's "white skin and blue eyes". After the aliens utilize one of the human brains and see their history, the poem moves and the alien claims, "a curious visual echo in their history of our own coing to their earth; a certain General Sherman had said concerning a group of them exactly what we were saying to you about these creatures: it is our destiny to asterize this planet...". The poem alludes to General Sherman who was an American soldier and a staunch leader in the deleterious affects towards Native Americans. Revard is making a direct parallel between these two dichotic yet unified stories that portray the discrimination and brutality towards others. Revard truly makes us identify with the oppressed individuals within the history and story in order to further understand it. Near the end of the poem, the alien claims, "They'll have to come into our pens and then we"ll get to study the way our heart attacks and cancers spread among them, since they seem not immune to these". The word cancer works on two levels. According to the New England Oxford American Dictionary, the denotation of cancer is a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to eradicate. In one way, the represents the literal cancer that the English colonists actually gave to the Native Americans when they traveled to the Americas. On the other hand, cancer may also refer to this seemingly cycle like nature in which a "superior" group comes to new land to conquer it for personal gain. In essence, the English colonists or in this case the aliens were the cancer that brought destruction and was hard to eradicate. In the very last line Revard claims, "Then we will be safe, and rich, and happy here forever". Revard seems to be using a sarcastic tone here  to describe the ignorance of the English colonists who looked over the brutality of their actions in order to be successful in a new land. The last line is also so effective because of the description of the deleterious actions by the aliens/English colonists previously mentioned in the poem.