Blog Post over "Nineteen"

The poem that I would like to talk about is Nineteen by Elizabeth Alexander. This poem has many hidden details and elements to it that I did not realize until after I re read it about 3 times. One of the things that I did not understand at first was why this young nineteen year old girl was falling for an older Vietnam veteran at a campsite. “I snuck around with an older man who didn’t tell me he was married…At nineteen it was my first summer away from home.” Throughout my lifetime I have experienced a lot of different things and I have found that when young girls are never allowed to go out, they tend to become ‘wild’ when they finally get a chance to get out. Her new freedom that she has gain, has led to her falling for a guy so quickly. Most fathers do not let their daughters have the freedom they deserve because they are afraid of the men that they will encounter. In this case, her non-freedom has led her to an older, married man.
Another element of this poem that interested me was the mystery of the older Vietnam veteran. It is common for soldiers to not talk about their experiences from war or oversea jobs. Their experiences may have been traumatizing and something that they would rather forget than live with daily. After the young lady had asked many times about his experiences in the war, the soldier never gave a true answer that reflected on his experiences in Vietnam. It is clear to see that he did not want to live with his past and wanted it to be forgotten. At the end of the poem it is storming hard and he makes a comment that lets us see into him. I understood his comment as if the rain falling onto the van sounding like gun shots in Vietnam, which caused him to jump up in the van. It was as if he was re-living his traumatizing time in Vietnam.