To begin, one must first take notice of the title of Hudgins’ poem and how it purposefully misleads the reader into thinking the poem is going to be about an “Industrial Scene.” However, as soon as the poem commences, a picture is alternately painted of a train “unloading people who stumble from the cars toward the gate.” This, in essence, could be part of an industrial foreground, but it instead leads most readers to be reminded of similar portrayals of concentration camps – and this idea is later solidified by Hudgins’ reference to “Birkenau,” which was a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The misleading aspect of the title was incorporated by Hudgins in order to hint directly at the misleading ways the Germans tricked the Jews into following their orders. This can be seen is Wiesel’s Night when it explicitly describes how in the beginning, the “impressions of the Germans were most reassuring” and “they never demanded the impossible, made not unpleasant comments, and even smiled occasionally at the mistress of the house (Wiesel 7).” Unfortunately, this deception of the Germans soon withered into the despicable genocide that proceeded not long after after; just as the deception of Hudgins’ “Industrial Scene” dissipated at the start of the actual poem.
The way in which Hudgins describes in the opening line people being unloaded is also something of which to take particular note. The scene directly correlates with the description Wiesel gives, but in Wiesel’s account it is much more tangible when he describes how the German soldiers “held out electric torches and truncheons” and “began to strike out to the right and left, shouting: ‘Everybody get out! Everyone out of the wagon! Quickly!’” In contrast, when Hudgins describes the same situation, everything is silent and almost calm. It is at this point that it becomes clear that Hudgins’ is utilizing the rules of Holocaust poetry; one of which is silence. It is argued that poets who did not personally experience the Holocaust should somehow use “silence” while at the same time describing in words what happened during this tragedy (Lang, 23). There are many possible approaches to this, but Hudgins’ way of utilizing the respectful silence was through his “wordless” description of unloading the people, as opposed to verbalizing it the way that Wiesel did.
After the Jews were unloaded and began to move “toward the gate,” Hudgins introduced a reoccurring “shadow” that eventually produced “smoke black as just plowed earth.” The word choice of Hudgins at this point is extremely critical because throughout all types of Holocaust literature, the genocide is often referred to as “the shadow of the Holocaust” to illustrate how the traumatic events affected both those directly and indirectly involved in a way that cast a “shadow” over their lives (Moses, 37). The word “shadow” also serves as the physical shadow that was cast over the concentration camps that the black smoke created. One of the more popular ways of the Germans extinguishing the Jews was through what Wiesel described as the “crematory (35),” where they burned the Jews alive. In the procession toward the flames, Wiesel is blunt in how he describes how he was “gradually drawing closer to the ditch” and all the while counting his steps and bidding “farewell to [his] father, to the whole universe (Wiesel 31).” He saw his life slowly being taken away from him and everyone around him was crying and praying to their Lord to spare them of the tumultuous death. Comparatively, Hudgins illustrates the procession to the fire as “Inside the gate is a small garden and someone is on his knees… to see which ones have set and will soon wither, clinging to a green tomato as it swells.” Each Jew was desperately hoping to cling to this “green tomato” of life long enough to be saved. The picture of the garden that Hudgins uses is important for the poem because poets who were neither victims nor survivors of the Holocaust should be compelled to resurrect and purify a language decimated by atrocity – it was what Lawrence Langer called “a gardener in the greenhouse of our verbal and spiritual resources to express and transcend the would of atrocity (Friedman, 549).” Therefore, it was vital that Hudgins utilized the example of the garden to portray an image that could be potentially interpreted as the devastation of the Holocaust, but was still not too descriptive for the reader – thus, adhering to the rules of Holocaust poetry.
After the victims of the Holocaust were seen in the poem as being in a garden, they then started “cooling their hands in the damp earth” to relieve the pain of the circumstance. At this point, Hudgins abruptly transitions from being within the scene and talking about the victims to being completely detached onlookers that “Even from our height… can’t tell which are guards, which prisoners.” The reader can only see the horrors from the perspective of a photograph and are merely “watchers.” The transition from being within the scene to being only viewers shows the reader that Hudgins is admitting that this poem is a portrayal of the Holocaust through the eyes of a non-survivor and someone who was removed from the circumstance altogether.
Critics reason that there are many reasons why non-affiliated poets like Hudgins felt it necessary to write about the Holocaust. One was to give testimony to the lives and cultures that were being annihilated, to bear witness as a means of assuring some kind of immortality for those who had not even a grave or marker to show they had once lived (Friedman 548). Hudgins does this in the last line of his poem when he remarks that “if we had bombs we’d drop them” on the concentration camp. This idea can be interpreted by Wiesel’s line in Night that “Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life (Wiesel 57).” It can be said that Hudgins knew that he could not do anything to change what happened in the past, but felt such remorse for society’s lack of help at the time. Through his poem he was not only, in a sense, apologizing for that lack of attention and help given to Holocaust victims, but also was saying that if it were happening today, he and society would do what they could to alleviate some of the suffering the victims endured – he wants to have given the Holocaust victims the “joy” and “confidence in life” of which Wiesel talked. “We agonize over events we can no longer influence, deaths we can no longer stop, and something in us cries for a chance to give life to the dead (Lang 20).” The way in which Hudgins does this serves as an advantage to his credibility as a poet who was writing from a removed viewpoint because he added the unique twist of bringing in the reader and him as “watchers” who can only ruminate about the agony endured by the victims.
As a poet, Hudgins took a large risk in writing Holocaust poetry because in order to do so he had to subtract something from the crude reality for the sake of heightened effect (Lang 23). Instead of writing bluntly as Elie Wiesel did from a survivor viewpoint, he had to use imagery to illustrate the concentration camp with the use of shadows, gardens, and tomatoes. Therefore, it can be difficult to read this poetry and even more difficult to judge it by ordinary literary criteria (Friedman 550). However, when this poem is read for concise understanding, the reader can truly begin to see the intent and success of Hudgins’ portrayal. He may have taken a risk in writing it, but ultimately created a moving poem that clearly adheres to the “unwritten rules” of Holocaust poetry while at the same time contains a unique use of poetic license. “Air View of an Industrial Scene” takes Holocaust literature like Elie Wiesel’s Night and turns it into an account of the “events beyond the imagination’s power to conceive, horrors unprecedented in history, horrors beyond the power of language to articulate (Freidman 547).”
Works Cited
Friedman, Saul. Holocaust Literature: A Handbook of Critical, Historical, and Literary Writings. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Lang, Berel. Writing and the Holocaust. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988.
Moses, Rafael. Persistent Shadows of the Holocaust: The Meaning to Those Not Directly Affected. Connecticut: International Universities Press, Inc., 1993.
Parmet, Harriet. The Terror of Our Days: Four American Poets Respond to the Holocaust. London: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp., 2001.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Bantam Books, 1960.
Air View of an Industrial Scene
by: Andrew Hudgins
There is a train at the ramp, unloading people
who stumble from the cars toward the gate.
The building’s shadows tilt across the ground
and from each shadow juts a longer one
and from that shadow crawls a shadow of smoke
black as just-plowed earth. Inside the gate
is a small garden and someone on his knees.
Perhaps he’s fingering the yellow blooms
to see which ones have set and will soon wither,
clinging to a green tomato as it swells.
The people hold back, but are forced to the open gate,
and when they enter they will see the garden
and some, gardeners themselves, will yearn
to fall to their knees there, untangling vines,
plucking at weeds, cooling their hands in damp earth.
They’re going to die soon, a matter of minutes.
Even from our height, we see in the photograph
the shadow of the plane stamped dark and large
on Birkenau, one black wing shading the garden.
We can’t tell which are guards, which prisoners.
We’re watchers. But if we had bombs we’d drop them.