When Kinnell sets out to make a poem he doesn’t aim
for it to be political, but the associations he perceives are political.
In the poem Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond, the
narrator, a Vietnamese villager, overhears “America singing,” the melody existence
the crunching of rifles varied with a bomber plane’s buzz. Thus, it gaps war
and peace by telling a bomber in contradiction of the backdrop of a peaceful
setting.
