At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Boarder

In the poem, "At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Boarder," William E. Stafford uses a serious tone and imagery to show how unimportant a perfectly good place is because nothing important happened there. Stafford says, "This is the field where the battle did not happen, where the unknown soldier did not die," to show that the insignificance of a place where nothing bad happened. It's almost as if America glorifies past despair and even though this little area of land is perfectly nice, nobody appreciates it because there's nothing that happened there worth remembering. When the author says, "Birds fly here without any sound, unfolding their wings across the open," he's trying to convey to the reader that the land is serene and beautiful even though nobody seems to care. Stafford's serious tone and imagery show the reader what society is missing because they're too focused on on places when battles took place and people died.