Nothing Gentle Will Remain
By:CAConrad
freeze frame before
dinosaur grabs him
story from a blind
dog’s perspective is
the movie I’m
waiting to see
white man with
bible in hand is how
the unluckiest
stories begin
things are always worse than we
allow ourselves to realize
it’s too much to admit
this planet is a nazi
you must kill to
survive you have
to strike them down
from lettuce to cows
villainous planet
freeze us burn us
melt the ice but
do get on with it
dropping sugar
just dropping it
everywhere in here
many more faces to
make vanish to keep
fueling the day fueling
the day fueling the day
Placenta Jr. tell them
whatever flavor you
want because I have
a gun and they
left theirs
at home
After my first few reads of the poem, “Nothing Gentle Will Remain” by CAConrad, I felt as though I understood the basic theme that was being illustrated. This idea being humans have an overall detrimental effect on each other and environment. But if I was able to get this message without doing an extremely close read, why would Conrad decide to write this poem in a very odd format? It occurred to me that although this poem seems to provide a basic understanding of the relationship between humans and nature, an even more in depth meaning lies within the poet’s choices in how he decided to write it.
Upon first glance it is very noticeable that this poem can leave you out of breath when you try to read it; this is most likely due to the fact that it consists of no punctuation, and is not even a sentence considering that there is no period at the end. Conrad’s choice to ignore the basic rules of English forces the reader to infer how ideas are separated in the poem, opening the door for readers to possibly interpret the poem in a different way than what was originally intended. Keeping this in mind, I knew that it was necessary for me to dissect the poem in a way that made sense logically so I attempted to separate the poem into its different parts. Each section presented a series of slant rhymes like “man” (line 7) and “hand” (line 8), “admit” (line 13) and “planet” (line 14), and “down” (line 17) and “cows” (line 18). The rhymes throughout the text helped me to chunk the pile of words into something that my brain could comprehend as full thoughts. After reading the poem in sections, I looked at it as a whole once again and raised the question: Why was it still shaped so oddly? The text is not shifted all to the left or right, and in fact the alignment and the amount of words in each line ch
anges frequently throughout the poem. Based on my studies of poetry I know that this was not a coincidence and began to examine the format choice. Lines 4, 8, and 11 stick out to the left a more significant amount, but this had nothing to do with how the poem was split into different parts. I decided to turn my page and look at the literal shape of the poem and came to the conclusion that it resembled a gun, line 11 being the trigger and line 35 being the part of the gun where a bullet wound exit. Although the actual words in the poem present a straightforward idea, the actions of how Conrad constructed the poem reveals a deeper meaning that not only can humans have a negative effect on the earth, their physical actions are clearly much more harmful than what they say they will do.
Continuing my investigation on this poem, I was left confused as I realized I could not identify exactly who the speaker was. The speaker’s voice seems to change from the beginning where they mentioned how “white man with bible in hand is how the unluckiest stories begin” (lines 7-10), but this contradicts the idea 
of the planet being described as a “nazi” (line 14) and “villainous” (line 19). These contradicting descriptions, along with the lack of proper punctuation, once again opens the door for an interpretation from the reader. But after gathering my understanding about the poem and how it uncovers the obstructive relationship between humans and the earth, it made more sense that this juxtaposition was ultimately used to aid in highlighting the negative effects of humans. By having the speaker describe the planet in such a way that made it seem like an altering viewpoint, it allowed for the creation of a sarcastic tone to ultimately further the main message. To add to this, the only capitalized word in the entire poem is “Placenta Jr.” (line 30). Since it is capitalized, one can assume that the poet is referring to a name, and this name directly mocks the human population by saying they are nothing but a disc of tissue.
In the end, even after spending time with the poem and being able to discover some meaning behind the unique choices, I still wonder why CAConrad decided to write about such a common concept in this way. But maybe because this theme of humans vs. earth is so common, that was the only reason he needed.
Hi Tess! At first glance when I saw your poem I was immediately confused. It seemed as though the poem was centered in the middle of the page. My first question to myself was, is there meaning behind the orientation of the poem? It seemed like this was the same question you also asked yourself. When you said that the author was ignoring the basic rules of English, I honestly laughed a bit out loud. This prompted me to go back to the top of the page to read the poem out loud, and I can admit, I was out of breath. Then when you said that you quite literally turned your page around to look through a new perspective and saw that the poem resembled a gun, my mind was blown. I was so impressed with this discovery you made that I went back using the methods in which you broke it up and read it again, keeping the idea of a gun in my mind. All of the sudden things started to click more for me to understand the poem. Also, I love your conclusion because it fully makes sense. CAConrad didn’t need to make his writing complex because the situation itself isn’t all that complex. In fact, being so common is the issue.
Hello Tess, I love how detailed and comprehensive your blog post is. I can’t lie, this poem’s structure really throws me off guard. Along with that, each line’s thought is not finished which makes things even more confusing. Also, the author transitions from talking about a dinosaur to a dog in matter of a line. I agree with you that the theme is about how humans haven’t taken care of the environment in a positive way, which hurts our earth. I am also confused why Conrad would chose this format? Maybe it is symbolizing the idea of roots of a plant and the idea of going from the ground up. I like how you analyzed the structure of the poem and how difficult it is to understand as there is no punctuation and it has multiple indents. I like how you mentioned that the rhymes allowed you to understand the full text more. Sometimes when you read things out loud, your brain processes the information better. Especially in this case, reading it out loud allowed the audience to picture what Conrad imagined when writing this. I feel that maybe Conrad wanted to make this poem open for personal interpretation, instead of following a specific format. Overall, I love this detailed blog post.
Hey Tess! I’ve never heard of CAConrad before, but I am really glad that I got to read your analysis of this poem. I often find myself feeling the same way as you illustrated in your first paragraph, getting a basic meaning quickly, but then needing to go back and dig deeper to discover more. I like how you added that it is up to the reader to infer how ideas are separated throughout the poem due to the lack of punctuation. It’s very interesting that the shape itself resembles a gun, I definitely see it now! I wonder if the speaker was not only using juxtaposition, but also envisioning two voices speaking throughout? I like how you ended your analysis with the question that every reader wonders, why write about a common concept in such a unique way? Maybe the fact that it is common is reason enough. I have a question for you: what was your process through each specific read? What did you look for depending on if it was your first, second, or third? I would love to know, as your analysis was very helpful to me. I look forward to reading more of your blogs in the future.
Hey Tess. I really liked how you did your analysis of this poem. The evidence you cited in the lines throughout made it easy to follow your thought process and easy to comprehend. However, your poem is definitely not easy to comprehend. It’s super impressive that you were able to find the basic meaning of it so quickly. When I read it for the first time, I was completely lost. I read it like a run-on sentence and felt like I was running out of breath in my mind somehow as it just drew on and on. It’s difficult to identify the speaker in this poem like you mentioned even though there is a clear “I” and first-person perspective throughout. The tone was very ominous and I felt offset while reading the poem, especially at the end of it. Like, who is “Placenta Jr.” and why does the speaker have a gun? This poem has a lot of room for personal interpretation in my opinion. It’s not entirely clear who the speaker is and what their intentions and motivations are. I loved the detail that you went into describing your interpretation of the poem, and I look forward to reading more of your blog posts in the future.