Battery Wallace

We are supposed to write a little review analysis thing for one of G.C. Waldrep's battery poems and post it up here, so here goes:

Reading through "Battery Wallace" was challenging. It was split into pretty obvious sections via wierd little marks, but those sections didn't always make sense. The first section seemed to hint at scenery, and managed to include a bit of deeper thought onto the frailties inherent in humanity, including warfare. The second section started with a narrative about the absurdity of the situation that gun batteries are now a park. After that it seemed almost word for word to be taken right from militarymuseum.org, and in that way incorporates the history of the Battery Wallace. I was actally pretty discouraged when I noticed the ridiculous similarities between the two; I didn't think it seemed right to take a websites attribution of it's history, switch it up just a little bit, add some spaces and call it a poem. Still, it was an accurate depiction of past events, but it feels wierd somehow. The third section is the "graffitti" section that seems to characterize all the battery poems. More than that though, he also thought to mention some litter, which in this case was a pair of lady's undergarments. Symbolizing a little bit of extra strangeness in having such powerful guns torn down and abandoned? Maybe. Either that or he just thought it fit in with the graffitti.The fourth section is all written in italics, and may or may not be intended to be a dream. It draws forth imagery of continuing racism against Japanese, and questions why it is. I'm curious as to why he begins the last three lines with doubled -'s. I'm actually curious as to more than that; why are all the spaces apart like they are? I know we touched on this in class, when John read it in stanza form, and Ann read it in its original, but I'm still not convinced. I know that it does something to the poem; it fundamentally changes how one reads it and sees it. I'm not sure, however, that it's as big a difference as we make it out to be. I was paying close attention to John and Ann during their respective readings while following along with the respective versions of the poem. I picked up that both ignored some pauses, and both added some pauses in where there were no marks to indicate one. This sparked my memory, and thinking back on most poetry I've followed along to, almost everyone does this. Is it therefore the poem that an individual's mind hears that influences the reading instead of the poem in the page? My theory is that the page effects it, but only for a little bit, after that the roots are laid, and however we imagined it at that point are how we'll read it from then on barring outside correction. Well, back to the poem. The fifth section is a short little bit about industry being raised by war and the consequences thereafter. It also refrences the word "lupine" which I originally thought to mean feral and ferocious, but after Gwen mentioned all the invasive plants in the other batteries, I suspect that it is indeed to mean one of those. Both definitions exist, so I guess you're free to choose your own interpretation. To end the poem he makes a pretty steadfast refusal, with sybolic falling imagery indicating a hopeless spiral. What's he refusing? Good question; he leads up to it with

"And wanting, at last, to know
that other, that
underneath--

I drop a coin.
It echoes in the shaft.
My refusal."

...So, I don't know. The industrialization of war? Invasive plants? Japanese racism? Something underneath something else? Your guess is as good as mine, but so you know, I'm going to guess the industrialization one. Call it a hunch.
Here's the poem:http://pages.slc.edu/~eraymond/ccorner/exchange/waldrep.html
It's the second one.