Review of Civil War Photograph by James Doyle

This poem immediately brings to mind the quote "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." (Joseph Stalin) when it begins with the sentence "Flesh and blood turn mathematic."  This is supported throughout the poem with mathematic language and phrases like "zeros into its center", "solid geometry", "interlocking masses", "blackboard solving equations", and finally concluding  in the second to last stanza that the camera is trying to fins some sort of "elusive X". As the poem progresses Doyle keeps the reader engaged with enjambment all through out the poem.  It reads smoothly, partly because of slant rhyme and assonance which are employed frequently.  They serve to add weight to certain words.  For example, in the fifth stanza, the alliteration of branches, brocades, and bones draws a clear connection between nouns that are traditionally harmless, branches and brocades, and associates them with bones.  Like the bloody scene being depicted, the entire poem is broken into two line stanzas, perhaps to further communicate the severage of limbs from bodies.  This is an interesting choice of formatting because it places an emphasis on the tragedy of the scene while the narrator is removed from the chaos of the scene and seeing it merely in a photograph.  There is an important transition in the last stanza, because the poem goes from describing things that are still and dead, to life and movement. This is perhaps part of an underlying message that the real horror of the battle cannot even begin to be comprehended through a lens.