Personal analysis essay
James Tate frequently focuses on the complex emotions associated with family
dynamics. “The Lost Pilot,” perhaps Tate’s most celebrated work is excellent example
of this theme:
for my father, 1922-1944 Your face did not rot like the others—the co-pilot, for example, I saw him yesterday. His face is corn- mush: his wife and daughter, the poor ignorant people, stare as if he will compose soon. He was more wronged than Job. But your face did not rot like the others—it grew dark, and hard like ebony; the features progressed in their distinction. If I could cajole you to come back for an evening, down from your compulsive orbiting, I would touch you, read your face as Dallas, your hoodlum gunner, now, with the blistered eyes, reads his braille editions. I would touch your face as a disinterested scholar touches an original page. However frightening, I would
discover you, and I would not turn you in; I would not make you face your wife, or Dallas, or the co-pilot, Jim. You could return to your crazy orbiting, and I would not try to fully understand what it means to you. All I know is this: when I see you, as I have seen you at least once every year of my life, spin across the wilds of the sky like a tiny, African god, I feel dead. I feel as if I were the residue of a stranger’s life, that I should pursue you. My head cocked toward the sky, I cannot get off the ground, and, you, passing over again, fast, perfect, and unwilling to tell me that you are doing well, or that it was mistake that placed you in that world, and me in this; or that misfortune placed these worlds in us.
The poem is an elegy to the speaker’s father, who was a fighter pilot and was shot
down in World War II when the author was only a year old. In “The Lost Pilot,” the
narrator is speaking directly to his father, whom he only knows through photographs and
his imagination. Unlike the typical elegy where the mourner fondly embraces the
memory of the deceased, the narrator of “The Lost Pilot” expresses resentment towards
his father. The poet Jeffrey McDaniel surmises the narrator’s emotional state in a short
piece he wrote for The Poetry Foundation:
His father can’t be with the family, but in the speaker’s heart/mind, the father doesn’t want to be with family. In the speaker’s transformative imagination, the father has run away, is playing hooky. His orbiting is “compulsive” and “crazy.” He’s having a grand old time up there, in the sky. The father could return, but he doesn’t want to. What makes the poem even sadder is how numb the speaker is, how he feels almost nothing, and how longing to make a connection with his orbiting father, he cannot get off the ground.
There are a few lines in the piece that directly speak to this idea. Here is the first:
I feel dead. I feel as if I were the residue of a stranger’s life, that I should pursue you.
In another spot, the speaker says, I cannot get off the ground, and, you, passing over again, fast, perfect, and unwilling to tell me that you are doing well,
The idea that the speaker feels as if he is “a residue of a stranger’s life” heartbreakingly
communicates this abandonment. Perhaps the speaker’s pilot is not the only one who
feels lost.
The single word choice that most powerfully depicts this cluster of feeling is the
use of the word “unwilling.” It is as if the speaker is suggesting the deceased is choosing
to stay away or stay lost. These lines in combination with the speaker’s allusion to
“orbiting” are also unique in that they weave together an extended metaphor in the work
–the concept of involuntary or automatic flight, manifested in inertia, in the way a vehicle
of motion simply remains in motion. This passivity seems to apply not merely to the
orbiting father but to the son who is seen here as caught in the gravity of grief and loss.
He mentions here that he “can’t get off the ground.” He is unable to fully comprehend
the magnitude of his emotions in relation to his father’s death or to move beyond them.
With the exception of the visual image, the only point of reference the speaker has
for his father is through the members of his father’s crew who survived. The speaker
often refers to the other pilots and gunners throughout the poem as a way of comparing
and contrasting his emotional response to his father’s loss. We are not exactly sure how
the speaker still encounters the other pilots and gunners, possibly through photographs
and news clippings, or maybe even in person at a memorial or military event. The
speaker mentions the other pilots in multiple stanzas:
like the others—the co-pilot, for example, I saw him yesterday. His face is corn-
mush…
… I would touch you, read your face as Dallas, your hoodlum gunner, now, with the blistered eyes, reads
his braille editions.
…I would not make you face your wife, or Dallas,
or the co-pilot, Jim. The inclusion of the other servicemen serves as an ever-present reminder of his grief.
When he encounters them he might ask: Why did the others survive and my father
didn’t? What does their survival mean? How can I make some sense of the death of my
father by examining their survival? This personal analysis serves as an important
backdrop for the speaker’s contemplation of his own emotions. In fact, this particular
emotional confusion becomes a major theme in the poem.
The crew members serve as a foundation or platform for the unusual and potent
imagery that Tate employs, imagery that seems to communicate what he is experiencing
as a result of his father’s death. The fact that the speaker is seeing the aftereffects of the
war in these men dredges up the harsh knowledge that his father’s body was never
discovered. This idea is evident in the non-closure the speaker alludes to throughout the
poem. The lines that refer to the others also successfully build a more elevated tension.
One that is dissimilar from the beginning of the poem where the narrative is pleading
with his father. This tension has a more “life and death” quality to it, and a more anxiety-
inducing urgency begins to unfold in the poem.
The organization of “The Lost Pilot” is worth noting. The poem is formatted in
tercets and the last word of each stanza is carefully placed in such as way that you need to
move to the next line to complete the phrase or sentence. This creates both a seamless
movement and tension. Not only is the shape of the content buzzing with anxiety but the
pace of the poem is as well. This movement also supports the extended metaphor of flight
and motion, as the inherently unstable tercet structure ushers the reader from one stanza
to the next with an increasing intensity and speed until the piece culminates into a
magnificent closure.
fast, perfect, and unwilling to tell me that you are doing
well, or that it was mistake
that placed you in that world, and me in this; or that misfortune placed these worlds in us.
This closure pushes the metaphor of flight and open sky to a philosophical level. Here
he transcends the informational realities that take place in the beginning of the poem, the
pleading and emotional confusion that occupies the body of the poem, by ambitiously
creating a sophisticated concept indicative of his emotions in which he refers to his life,
his father’s afterlife, and their metaphysical relationships as “worlds.” The speaker in
his world is staring into a vast open sky, into outer space, a domain replete with other
worlds as vast and mystifying as the issue he is grappling with in “The Lost Pilot.”
Tate explores these highly conflicted emotions and the disparity of these two
worlds through other techniques as well. The first being his use of various dictions in the
piece. When the poem begins the diction is conversational and plain. It reflects the
information that the author is trying to communicate about the setting of the poem. But as
the poem touches on the complexity of his emotion the diction becomes more elevated.
At the beginning of the piece, the plain conversational diction gives the reader a sense
that he is engaged in an argument with his father. The use of the words and phrases
“rot,”,“corn mush,” and, “for example” are not typically poetic. The narrator even repeats
himself in the line “your face did not rot,” a kind of emphatic device one might actually
utilize while engaged in a heated discussion. But quickly after the first few stanzas the
poem switches gears as the emotional content becomes more burdensome. When he is
describing the pain of seeing his father’s image, the language appears more sophisticated
in contrast to the diction that begins the poem:
– it grew dark, and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their distinction.
In the tenth and eleventh stanza he continues:
or the co-pilot, Jim. You could return to your crazy orbiting, and I would not try to fully understand what it means to you. All I know is this: when I see you, as I have seen you at least
The diction at the beginning of this stanza is again rather plain-spoken. It acts more as an
informational or narrative tool. The speaker even uses the word crazy which is a highly
conversational word. But as soon as the information is being absorbed by the reader, the
speaker introduces a more surrealistic complex imagery and a more vexed concept of his
emotions:
spin across the wilds of the sky like a tiny, African god, I feel dead. I feel as if I were the residue of a stranger’s life, that I should pursue you.
These highly potent images more clearly and movingly reflect the speaker’s emotion.
The image of the “tiny African God spinning across the wilds of the sky” is one of the
most powerful images of the poem. But perhaps it is still only a close second to the
alarming images of one of his father’s disfigured companions. The narrator describes the
co-pilot’s face as “corn mush.” This unusual image invites an almost tactile response in
the reader. And such powerful yet unorthodox images immediately announce the poem’s
highly unique visual landscape.
