Battery O'Rorke unpacked

     Of all G.C. Waldrep's battery poems, I find myself pulled into Battery O'Rorke in particular. There are fourteen separate stanzas, including single line stanzas, and in free verse form. The form itself is fitting to the poem, as the first stanza speaks of flitting existence, as if to imply that the strictness of any other form would just be a waist of time that could be used to more fully communicate the poem's meaning.

"What is written here fades quickly.
           Faces drawn in chalk,
                       names,"
  
      Faces and names-- the two facets of people as identities that we commit to memory are revealed to be brief in reality. I feel as if Waldrep is reminding us that we are perennials, not annuals.

The poem's next stanza touches on what I take to referencing the actuality of California's battery forts, and the military thought processes behind them.

                                                  "the idea/
          of defense, of a beach/
                                   ripe for landing."
 
  This particular stanza is pretty much staraight forward in referring to the military's reasoning behind developing the batterys on the California coast; that the straight and level beaches provided ideal landing strips to be utilized by either the U.S. or other forces. As it is our coast, the forts would ensure that they would be for America's use only. The batteries are longer lasting than their actual intended purpose, which reflects the perrenial claim of the first stanza. According to the The California State Military Museum,

"Battery O'Rorke was built to mount four 15-pounder, 3 inch guns, serial numbered 90, 91, 92 and 94, on Model 1903 pedestal mounts. The mounts were built by the Watertown Arsenal and were serial numbered 68 through 71. It was not armed for many years, at least not until 1909. The battery was nevertheless named by War Department General Order 194 on December 27, 1904 in honor of Colonel Patrick Henry O'Rorke. Colonel O'Rorke, at native of Ireland and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was killed at the age of 27 at the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War in July 1863. Each gun could fire shells weighing 15 pounds a distance of five miles. These small guns were important because they could be loaded and fired more rapidly than larger weapons. The guns were located at their location to prevent enemy landings on Rodeo Beach. The battery was inactivated in 1945 and its guns scrapped in 1946."  The history of the O'Rorke battery is testiment to the perennial theory in that the man by which it was named after lived and died a short life of 27 years, in a war that was unlrelated to the purpose of the battery itself. therefor the name was just a name, and held little inictail meaning or purpose to the fort itself. The name was still there, but faded away, as the battery is as it stands today. Sanding with little or no purpose, the face of the battery has faded with its already faded name.

The Irish namesake also ripples through the poem through references to the sea. As the country is an island, the sea is significant to both culture and native literature. The significance of an American battery on the California coast being named after an Irishman who fought and died during the Civil War could have been part of what Waldrep was trying to distill when writing this poem.