Cycles in Cycles: Repetition in Peter Meinke’s “Atomic Pantoum”
The pantoum is a cycle. This is most easily observable when a poet is following all of the form’s rules, when lines and images and themes are being reused and recycled endlessly. Its original form, the Malay pantun, was much shorter—a deceptively simple abab rhymed quatrain. The first two lines were an image, the last two a commentary. Prior to its Western colonization, the form was used primarily as a commentary on Malay life. It was simultaneously a product of and testament to Malay culture, each poem a universe that the poet allowed us to explore, if only for four brief lines (Gotera 257). Its Western descendant, the pantoum, has changed considerably. Now, the form is a complex set of interlocking quatrains, each one inheriting lines from the one before it and introducing its own, before the process begins again. Abab becomes bcbc becomes cdcd, and so on until the very last quatrain, which once again circles back to the a lines presented in the original stanza. It is not only a cycle, but an almost “obsessive” spiraling of ideas (Gotera 257). This form’s inherent repetitiveness lends itself very well to frantic storytelling, and can be used to create comedy just as easily as it can be used to create tension.
Peter Meinke takes advantage of the latter in his poem “Atomic Pantoum.” Meinke’s poem is a fascinating commentary on the Cold War, and is especially reflective of the fear and uncertainty he and many others felt at the time. The meaning slowly spirals and expands throughout each quatrain. What begins as a scientific analysis of the creation of the atom bomb becomes an analysis of humanity as a whole. He seems to ask (and answer) the question of why we create weapons of mass destruction.
The poem’s first line establishes a phrase that will be repeated many times within the poem: “In a chain reaction” (Meinke 258). The rest of the quatrain explains, from a seemingly purely scientific point of view, the chain reaction of nuclear fission—one is split, neutrons are released, which “release more neutrons,” and so on (258). However, this “chain reaction” does not just apply to this process or the quatrain in which it is explained. It applies to the entire poem. By using it as the very first line, Meinke is establishing that it applies to everything that follows, from the science of nuclear fission to the process of nuclear fallout. He emphasizes this by taking advantage of the pantoum form’s natural repetition. He not only inserts the line into other quatrains, but does so in a way that requires—in accordance with the form’s rules—for the line to be passed down to the next quatrain. This, as well as the order in which each “chain reaction” is peppered into the poem, allows us to assemble a narrative: the bombs, which were created by their own little microscopic chain reactions, triggered a much, much bigger one, the Cold War itself. Each new stanza eventually comes back to that core idea. The poem even ends with this concept, the last line reads “in a chain reaction” echoing the first (259). The narrative has come full-circle. However, this last repetition is not a conclusion, but instead, a reminder, and a warning. The Cold War was part of a chain reaction that has not ended. The chain is unbroken. That last enjambed line, hanging there with an expanse of blank page beneath it, tells us that the danger is not gone. We are still caught within this ever-spiraling arms race fueled by fear and aggression and scientific advancement.
It is a cycle told within a cycle. Content and form are united in “Atomic Pantoum” to deliver this warning.
Meinke, Peter. “Atomic Pantoum.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 258.
Gotera, Vince. “The Pantoum’s Postcolonial Pedigree.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Anne Finch and Katherine Varnes, U of Michigan P, 2002. pp. 254–261.
