Masts at Dawn

Masts at Dawn
by Robert Penn Warren
page 63

The poem takes place as night as slowly turning into day and Warren uses a lot of vivid and unique imagery and detail to express this. The main image, and I say this because it is repeated and part of the title, is that of masts going white and I have to admit that I'm not sure what this means exactly. Obviously the masts are those of ships on the ocean described in the poem but I'm not sure what going white means. The structure of the poem is very interesting as some of the lines are very short and offset from the margins of the rest of the poem. This initially occurs at the end of stanzas but then begins breaking up stanzas. Another thing I found interesting is the image of a drowned cat floating at sea; this somewhat disturbing image felt very strange amidst the other images of the poem.