Laird

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Carly Laird
English 201-02
Dr. Matthew Roth
September 30, 2014
Against Prognostication Close-Read Analysis

Jeffery Thomsons poem Against Prognostication is a fathers predictions for his

sons future. However, rather than containing bright and hopeful images for his sons youth, the
speaker makes extremely negative predictions, all while claiming he will not try to foresee his
sons future, a contradiction that is evident even from the title. The word prognostication means
the predicting of future events. From the title, it appears as if the speaker of the poem intends to
warn the audience against trying to predict the future. However, this is exactly what the speaker
does throughout the entirety of the poem. From this, it soon becomes evident that the poem is
not just a fathers doubtful predictions for his sons future, but rather a fathers confession of
his own past transgressions, ones he is certain will be repeated in his sons life.
In the first line, Thomson writes, I have not written about my sons future, / not yet
(1-2). The speaker goes on to list all of his predictions for the events in his sons life that he
claims he will not write about, creating a sort of paradox in which he commits the very act he
told his readers he would not commit. Already one can gather the sense of tension the poem
holds as the speaker continually contradicts himself and tries to wrestle with his own shame.
This tension builds with the authors use of structure, each two-lined stanza leading into the
next and often ending in the middle of a sentence.
The first three stanzas contain this sort of structure:

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I have not written about my sons future,

not yet. How he will read and reread

the Audubon Field Guide and memorize each bird,

how he will wander off under the dappled light

and return home in a squad car. Not because

I cant imagine the way he will carefully... (2 5).

By splitting the poem into two lined stanzas, each flowing into the next, Thomson creates
a frantic feeling, a sense of rolling guilt and pessimism. Any hope the reader had for the sons
future is crushed as the positive image of a curious boy learning about birds and nature is
quickly followed by a negative image of him being driven home as a juvenile delinquent. The
way in which the stanzas are broken up, utilizes line breaks and enjambment, do not prepare the
reader for this sudden gloomy image. Thomson makes it as shocking as possible, preluding it
with the beautiful image of a young boy exploring beneath dappled light.
This balance of positive and negative images is continued into the fourth and fifth
stanza as well:
hold his hand above his heart
after he has unfurled the skin

from his meaty thumb, or how he will rip apart

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a frog hind legs to jaw and how he will feel after (7 10).

Again, the positive image of hand over heart is quickly clashed into the negative one of
the boy mutilating himself and an innocent animal. From this, we can gather that these are
actions the father himself did as a child. It is evident that the father had an extremely violent
childhood, one he looks back on with shame and disgust, yet is hopelessly projecting onto his
expectations for his son. Even though he is meticulously recording the events of his past, his
mind is filled with feelings of disorder, for he knows that his tragic past will repeat itself, no
matter what. This tension finds itself not only in the ideas being expressed, but in the rhythm of
the poem as well.
The poem is written without a definite meter. In the sixth stanza it appears to be some
form of trochaic pentameter. Thomson writes, I have not talked about the day he will wrap /
his friends car around a tree and somehow (11 12). There are several substitutions as the
stanza begins with anapest and contains two iambs, giving the meter a very irregular feeling. In
the seventh stanza, however, the meter changes. walk away, leaving the scene limping /
home to sleep in bloody sheets (13 14). The line begins with three trochees, but then rises
into several stressed syllables on the words scene and limping. The act of the boys limping
can be felt in the jumpy, offbeat rhythm. There are also no exact rhymes in the poem. The
words that do seem to chime do so in an off way. They fit well, but are far from simple,
masculine rhymes. In line 15, the word genealogy has a faint chime with the word sheets
from the previous stanza, but it is not definite. The lack of rhyme combined with the lack of
meter classifies the poem as free verse.

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This raises the question as to why Thomson chose to write in free verse. Though free
verse is often extremely lyrical, Thomson uses it to extend the speakers disjointed internal
tension into the very structure of the poem itself, deeply solidifying the overall meaning. Free
verse gives Thomson the option of playing with rhythm in order to reflect what he is saying in
each line, such has the example given earlier of the boy limping along with the meter. There is
also a certain irony in the fact that the poet has freedom to choose his rhythm and rhymes, but
the speaker believes his son will have no choice when it comes to his future. In this way, even
the way the poem is written creates tension as it clashes with the message in a way that reflects
the speakers internal struggle, which is elaborated on as the poem goes on.
Continuing to the eighth stanza, we can see there is a shift as the father goes from
narrating to becoming an outside voice again, bringing the readers back to his contradicting
claim of being against prognostication and rebuilding the tortured persona he has taken on. The
idea of the father reflecting on his past is made extremely clear with the line Not out of fear,
though this genealogy hints at it (15). The genealogy is the speakers past, the line of
ancestry that connects father and son and binds their lives so tightly that the speaker believes
his sons life will be a mirrored image of his own. Yet there is no legacy to this speakers
genealogy. Instead, the son is doomed to live in these sins of the father, faults that have been
passed down to him through his parentage. The speaker even goes on to say he is speaking out
of reticence, a sort of reserve, and not reprimand. He is not trying to blame or lecture his
son, but is resigning to the fact that there is no hope for the boys future for, what can he learn,
anyway, from such a history? (17).
His internal conflict is raised once more stanza 10 and 11:

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above a flame and smells himself burning.
Perhaps, by then his father will be brave enough

to let him have his own life, but I will not say,
be comforted, for comfort comes at a price (19 -22).

First, the father insults himself by implying he is acting out of cowardice, and is not
brave enough to have hope for his sons future. He is trying to have a slight bit of optimism and
allow his sons life to play out the way in which it is destined, whether or not that means he
will follow in his fathers footsteps. However, he is not going to take comfort in the small hope
that his sons life will be one of innocence and new beginnings. Thomson writes, comfort
comes at a price, implying the father believes that if he is hopeful, he will only be less
prepared when his worst fears are realized.
As the poem comes to a close, there is another shift to be noted. Through the majority
of the poem, the speaker is condemning himself for events in which he was at fault. The only
characters have been the father and the son in which he is somewhat synonymous with.
In stanzas 12 16, however, the speaker introduces two new characters:

And I will not talk about what comes next:

a girl, a kiss, a field of grass. His thin heart

tearing as she leaves. That part of the story

is all anyone wants, denouement

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and then the singing, operatic camerawork

pulling back to reveal his loneliness in the grass, (23 28)

Now it appears the speaker is directing his anger at a woman who broke his heart, as
well as at the society that seemed eager to see him fall into sin and depression. But the speaker
does not hold himself above blame, for he is still projecting this onto his sons future. He still
believes his son will share his tragic fate, for in the boy exists the same potential for fear,
violence, and corruption as existed in his father. The last three lines of the poem symbolize this.
blue herons stalking through a salt marsh at sunset, / ten glaucous gulls and a black back on
the gables / of paintworks riding out a storm (29 31). The son is bound to live in this storm
and to ride it out, as if he were an innocent bird being forced to fly through buffeting winds of
someone elses creation. The winds in this case are the horrific events and the outside force
creating them is the father. This final image, though seeming slightly out of place when
compared to the style and subject of the previous lines, is a fathers final resignation to a fact he
cannot change: his son will fall from innocence in the exact same manner that he did.
Against Prognostication leaves no hope for the speakers son. The speaker is
established as a broken and sinful man, filled with corruption and shame. He believes his sons
fate will mirror his own, a fact that seems inescapable to even the reader by the poems end.
This idea is communicated in the words of the poem itself, but the message even finds its way
into the very structure of the poem. It becomes the poem, in a sense, existing in such a way that
there is no way to escape it. Thomson has created a poem that leaves readers feeling the same

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despondency that the speaker does. Even if there is a certain sympathy that can be felt toward
the speaker, it is evident that there is no hope.