The Life of Donald Justice

The Life of Donald Justice

Donald Justice is a poet who has had some of the best poems from American literature, along with the lifestyle that is shared by most striving artists1. He has worked his way through life with many occupations and experiences under his belt, with the same diversities possessed by his poems3. Some of these poems include “Men At Forty,” “For A Freshman Reader,” “Poem,” and “Incident In A Rose Garden” and show a great difference in tone. Not every poet has the same way of showing a different tone for their poems; sometimes, poets keep to one style of writing and stick with it. Donald Justice works his own weave for these poems, each individual to one another.

“Men At Forty” is a poem written by Justice, which isn’t all about personal experience, but is more or less about the standard man at middle age7. As the poem begins, the ubiquitous narrator refers to the fact that “Men at forty learn to close softly doors to rooms they will not be coming back to,” which is a metaphor for the decisions that cannot be taken back or changed. Closing softly refers to the way most males are about decisions, brash and make a lot of risks that aren’t normally referred to as “Softly” closing. Then the narrator refers to life as a voyage on “the deck of a ship,” which is a metaphor for the way that men are carried through their life without the ability to go back or try again, but are on a course that is unchangeable7. “The face of the boy as he practices tying his father’s tie in secret,” is explaining the preparation for being a middle aged man from childhood. Then “the face of that father” is more or less another sign that men will ultimately suffer the same life at forty that his father had before him7. The subtle message here is that Justice does not want to be bound by the same bonds that held his forefathers1, but remake his own and not follow the same mordant existence that is supposed. Justice knew that the “normal” ways of life wouldn’t interest him; he even started as a musical major then decided to instead earn in BA in English1.

“Poem” is a short title for a very bitter sonnet addressed not to the reader, but to the reader’s opinions6. “Poem” starts out with the line, “This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, but no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will,” which actually is what the poem is about - you, the reader. Throughout the poem, the narrator is being very loathsome towards the reader as if knowing him, and judging him in a very cynical manner6. “Your type of beauty has no place here. Night is the sky over this poem,” is a quite belaboring remark, and is the general tone of the poem itself-very unhappy with the reader’s existence2. “Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon. You will forge the poem, but not before it has forgotten you,” which is another remark that is negative towards the unsuspecting reader, showing that Justice has another side to him other than his sarcasm and symbolism that is mainly unseen1.

Justice had some troubles with being told what he could or could not do, he even left Stanford University because he was told that his life of studying and teaching was too much for him by the head of the school department1. And the poem ends with the smug comment, “And it does not matter what you think. This poem is not addressed to you,” which then contradicts the entirety of the poem. The poem referred to the reader in almost every stanza, causing some level of confusion to the reader about the meaning of the poem itself2.

Justice’s poems are not all about the way that life should be run, but many are. “For A Freshman Reader” is one such poem that is about a father figure telling a young man about how he shouldn’t4 “Bother with odes my son./Timetables are more precise,” which is a more serious yet sarcastic reference to the lessons that were learned by his predecessors and not to make the same mistakes that were made in the past; such as the rise in Nazism in the pre World War II era4. The tone holds grim sarcasm about how “Those who have compromised themselves morally or ethically” should be condemned for it is about precision, which later is self-contradictory because it says that the reader, who was referred to as being morally corrupt4, shows that in the end being a “precisionist” is ultimately the ones being corrupt, giving completion to “the poem’s ironic and condemnatory position.” The ironic statement that flows through the poem can best be seen as Justice’s own personal way of showing the dangers of being too anti-conformist or too conformed. Donald Justice has a great style on showing the flaws of both sides of the spectrum, not making it lean too far towards any one specific