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Name: Sara Zaiem zadeh

Course: Contemporary Poetry Lecturer: Dr. Yaghoobi

Judging Distances comparing to Naming of Parts by Henry Reed

By the first sight, the poem may seem a love story; two lovers speaking together about the distances ,believing that it is not important how far they are from each other but the important issue is that how you say it; " Not only how far away, but the way that you say it Is very important " but profoundly speaking this is not exactly what the poem or may be the poet would intend and determined to bear in the readers mind , it look as if the trainer is trying to tell the soldiers it is not important how far it is but it is important how you should say this far away is ,so the direction and location of this how far away - the way that a soldier says it- seems essential as well .Possibly, you as a soldier won't understand how far that location is away from you Perhaps you may never get /The knack of judging a distance "But: , but at least you know How to report on a landscape: the central sector, the right of the arc and that, which we had last Tuesday, And at least you know Army soldiers are discerned not only to say how far it is but how to say this far away is also worthy of mention:

That maps are of time, not place, so far as the army Happens to be concernedthe reason being, Is one which need not delay us. The poem goes to depict the physical significance of the life a soldier through which he is capable of finding his direction: . ..Again, you know There are three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar, And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly That things only seem to be things. To say that there, is landscape or a barn is not a way to report something as a soldier but at five o'clock right at the center of this sector " is a dozen/ Of what appear to be animals;" but the instructor warns that whatever with a bleeding sound may not be considered as a sheep'
whatever you do, / Don't call the bleeders sheep."

In the next stanza the trainer is going to show how they see things and judging distances:
There to the west, On the fields of summer the sun and the shadows bestow Vestments of purple and gold.

If you are going to judge those distances you are going to say that there are a man and a woman lie down there under a tree, this doesn't mean that there are two lovers there under the tree but one can conclude that there are some people living there, " under some poplars a pair of what appear /to be humans Appear to be loving." The instructor says if saying me that there are two people in the west lying under the tree shows that you neglect two things very important:

The human beings, now: in what direction are they, And how far away, would you say? And do not forget There may be dead ground in between.

It is important to tell me where these two human beings lie because there may be dead ground.
There may be dead ground in between; and I may not have got The knack of judging a distance; I will only venture A guess that perhaps between me and the apparent lovers, (Who, incidentally, appear by now to have finished,) At seven o'clock from the houses, is roughly a distance Of about one year and a half.

Ultimately, the poet maintains that it is not vital how far that dead ground between we and the enemy is but the fact the other parties are human being too is also important , and judging such a distance took them one year and a half .In other word it took the soldiers one year and a half to come to the point that the things they see are just hallucinations and in this very one year and a half they've learned that they cannot be sure about whatever they see, how things appear to them are not exactly what they are . To sum up, one can come to the ground that the lesson given by the instructor to the soldier is not just to say that how our location- using the map to find those locations or directions- differs from reality but moreover, he wants to say something deeper by illustrating the life a soldier that whenever we judge things we are not aware of the real reality of things and due to the fact that our judgment consists of different dimensions we create a bogus image out of things. So the most important message is the very concept of" judging". It has taken those one and a half to judge distances so how can one simply judge other things and make his/her own fake image out of those imaginary images. Comparing this to "Naming of Parts" we would say that they have some common points we can see that the soldier's point of view differs from his instructor, he sees the beauty in

nature whereas the trainer's judgment of beauty is through teaching parts of the weapon and neglecting those beauties faraway. The poet aims to tell us that the world around us is totally at peace, and that's we making it full of war to survive. In "judging Distances" we come to the point that even if we are watching the same thing the issue of judging may cause us a long period of time and the matter of sheer judging is much more important, whatever in front of our eye is not exactly whatever we see. It goes without saying that the poems are farfetched from being titled " War Poems", but in fact one can say that they each and every one of them are about human beings situated in different conditions and the way they look through this world; they have each put on their own glasses and that's the way each man is going to make the world around him/herself, but on the whole the matter of judging would discerned an important factor to build up such world.