Analysis Of Where The Telmetries End

C1C Levi Fry

Dr. McGuire

English 411-M2

08 Sep 2016

Word Count: 700

What is a Telemetry and Where Do They End?

Flipping through the pages of Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, I just needed to find a poem to recite. Fourteen lines, the minimum requirement, easy enough. People stabbing each other, flipped Humvees, shrapnel flying, every poem appears the same. We were just taught that war poetry contains sexual undertones, but the explosions I am reading about here only involve the presence of gunpowder.

“We make love and the dry sheets crackle” (Turner 25).

“Ok, this one is rather candid,” I thought, “but I don’t understand the title at all.” Where the Telemetries End. According to the dictionary, Telemetry is the process of using special equipment

to take measurements of sensory information which is then sent by radio to another location (“Telemetry”).
“That word, telemetry, seems to be rather wasted,” I assumed. When do the transmissions over radio end? Actually, where do they end? ”I guess it is time to find out,” I decided after a quick scan of the rest of the poem. “Sir, I’d like to pick this for my recitation.”
After spending two hours memorizing thirteen lines of poetry, it was time to figure out how I was going to recite this in front of class. I performed it over and over trying to decipher the poem, trying to use the title as the key.
Reading through the poem, the first few lines appeared very straight forward.

“We make love and the dry sheets crackle in blue sparks” (25). This was clearly a reference to a sexual encounter by the main persona in the poem. “Water slides vein by vein over the face of stone” (25). This is the physical act of weeping by the main character. At this point, I do not feel like the author has conveyed anything significant, but that is when I noticed something interesting. The author just described two very intense and opposite emotions in quick succession; sex, which is an emotionally uplifting experience, and then weeping, a form of emotion that occurs in extreme distress. The act of sex could not prevent the main persona from feeling piercing sadness immediately after the act, a sadness which pushes the main character to the point of

tears.
Yet the night goes on, calm again, as the main persona lies in bed sharing breaths with his sexual partner (25). Again, out of stillness originates powerful emotions, this time in the form of voices, which the main persona begs to leave him alone. These are not just any voices though; these are voices of the dead who we are led to believe the main character has killed in the past. The main character just wants one night without being troubled by the revenants, whose lives he had taken.
After reaching a composed state again, in the absence of haunting voices, he observes the “tracery of lights falling all around us” (25). This is his tranquility. It is his realization, that war, the dead, and his emotions will never let him rest. And thus the poem ends.
This poem follows a series of intense emotional highs and lows in rapid sequence.

The title, Where the Telemetries End, plays on the word “telemetry.” Again, telemetry is the collection of sensory information that is later transmitted by radio waves to another location. Every day we experience events that are sometimes positive and enriching, and others that leave us with emotional scars. Burned into us, is every vivid detail of these events, due to their emotional impact. Think of something that happened to you in the past, something that caused you sadness to the point of tears. I bet you can recall every bit of sensory information that you experienced during that time. Sometimes this sensory information, such as pictures of loved ones or the smell of old clothes, triggers our recollection of such events. If they are especially painful to us, we try to repress these feelings; however, out of thin air they come back to haunt us again and again. This is behavior comparable radio waves, which appear out of thin air and express information. Telemetry, if you will. And so this leaves both the reader and main persona asking, “Where the telemetries end,” and do they

end?

Where the Telemetries End
Such is life:
we make love and the dry sheets
crackle in blue sparks. Water
slides vein by vein
over the face of stone.
We share a long night
of breathing. And when the dead
speak to us, we must ask them
to wait, to be patient,
for the night is still ours
on the rooftops of Al Ma’badi,
with a tracery of lights
falling all around us.

Works Cited
“Telemetry" Def. 1. Merriam-Webster Online, Merriam Webster, n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.
Turner, Brian. Here, Bullet. Farmington, Me.: Alice James, 2005. Print.

Documentation
Other than what was listed in the works cited page, no additional help was received on this assignment.