First Fight. Then Fiddle. By Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendoyln Brooks uses the structure of a petrarchan sonnet, “a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines and a second section of six lines”, with an unexpected twist to convey a message, to “First fight. Then fiddle”. Her message is simple but it’s conveyed in a very original way that it stands out and grabs your attention. Brooks starts her poem with fiddling and then suddenly takes a turn into the conflict of the poem.

Brooks’s poem does not follow the pattern she wants the audience to follow, which really has the reader following every line closely for examination. The title and the very first line tells what message she clearly wants us, the readers, to hold on to; “First Fight. Then fiddle.” But as you continue reading the poem, you wonder if she really is just trying to tell us to fiddle and then fight, the obvious pattern the poem is taking after all. The first eight lines, Brooks is obviously fiddling, “Ply the slipping string/ With Feathery sorcery; muzzle the note/With hurting love; the music that they wrote/ Bewitch, bewilder…” Then at line nine she takes a sharp turn, introducing the conflict to us finally.

The theme to this poem is the war and peace. Playing the violin is the peace the author tries to keep through winning the war. The beginning of the poem is fiddling but line 7 and 8 “Be remote/A while from the malice and from murdering.” seems to suggest that the fiddling can not be maintained for long but only for “a while” until the time to continue the war.

The time this poem was written, 1949, wasn’t too long after the World War II. World War I was considered at the time to be “the war to end all wars” but evidently that was not the case, World War II followed and not to mention other depressions occurred, such as the stock market crash, where people were fighting for a shelter and food to live for another day. The point is that Brooks knows that a war might solve one conflict but soon another problem occurs and another war is necessary, literally and figuratively. Her poem says that you can suppress from the war that will ensue sooner or later only for “a while” so in that way she could possibly be saying fiddle while you can.

Line 11, “Rise bloody, maybe not too late/For having first to civilize a space/Wherein to play your violin with grace.” Brooks suggests that maybe it’s “not too late” to realize and overcome the problems that are always looming around to threaten the peace of the violin. When the violin is being described, “Devote/The bow of silks and honey,” it is being used as a metaphor for civilization. The violin is being described as a brittle instrument, with “slipping string” that needs to be carefully played and society is also held on by some sort of balance that could easily be tilted with one end fighting for peace and love and the other end witnessing the brutality of war. The violin which Brooks describes as a precious and delicate thing that needs to be well taken care of much like civilization.

But why did Brooks discuss first music and then conflict? For one thing it does grab our focus and thoughts. If the poem had started out with the conflict first and then followed by the fiddling, would we have thought so much as to what deeper meaning could she been trying to make other then saying fight your wars first and then fiddle? Probably not, well at least that is not where my thoughts would lead to. Another thing she could have been deducing is that fiddling first does not work out; the fiddling would only be disrupted by problems if we do not solve them first, if we do not fight our battles before claiming the prize of a safe and peaceful place to play the violin. Her poem starts with fiddling and then sharply introducing the conflict and then leaves us with the hope to return to the violin after the worst is over.

Brooks uses a wide range of poetry devices, from metaphor, imagery to alliteration, the repetition of the initial consonant sounds. “First Fight. Then Fiddle…slipping string” are such examples of alliteration, using this it emphasizes these words and sticks to the readers memory, making them important. Imagery, language that evokes sensory images, can be found all throughout the poem. She uses words like “hurting love”, “silks”, and “malice” and so on, these evoke emotions and feelings and sensations that you as a reader could relate to which gives the poem some depth. The tone of the poem is serious to the very last line, with incredible usage of the masculine rhymes which gives a musical scheme that works only too well with the musical instrument. The effect of her twists and turns throughout this poem is undeniable and unquestionably an original way to make her point about war and peace and how they go hand in hand, just like her structured poem. Reading the poem with the music described first and then conflict conveys the same message as if it were to be read with conflict appearing first and then the music. The last effect it leaves on a reader is where the difference occurs.