My assigned poem from Habeas Corpus was “July 12, 1726: William Fly.” I felt that McDonough’s choice to use this “pirate” was an interesting one, not because of the crime itself, but partially because of the punishment, and partially the way Fly conducted himself during his sentencing and punishment. After performing a close reading of the sonnet, I saw a parallel between McDonough’s apparent protest of the death penalty and Fly’s protest. This poem also raises questions about the futility of words.
As far as rhyme is concerned, “William Fly” is a fairly conventional sonnet. It has a typical Shakespearean rhyme scheme, alternating rhyming and ending in a rhymed couplet. In addition, after the first four lines, each end rhyme is an exact rhyme. The first four lines, however, feature end rhyme, but each rhyme is a slant rhyme. For example, she uses “threw” and “food,” and “within” and “forgive.” Perhaps McDonough had these first four lines as slant rhymes and the rest of the rhymes as exact without reason, but I believe there was more intentionality behind the choice. The first four lines deal mostly with Fly’s crime, while the rest of the poem deals mostly with his reactions and his actual execution. The crime itself, while not necessarily normative in his day, was not so out of the ordinary. Being a pirate in the 1700s was much less unusual than it would be now. What was unusual about William Fly was his refusal to conform to what the legal system asked of him in his final days. Other men were executed with him for the same crime, and while they readily repented publicly, Fly did not, refusing to “dy with a lye” in his mouth. It is interesting, then, than McDonough uses slant rhyme in the lines of the poem that discuss the more run-of-the-mill part of Fly’s story, and then uses conventional rhyme in the section that deals with Fly’s unusual escapades. McDonough’s opposing use of rhyme draws attention to Fly’s protest, which to me, is at the core of the poem’s meaning.
This sonnet, unlike some of the others in the collection, is not broken into stanzas. Although this certainly bears some significance, I think this is more a result of the fact that the poem does not have an abrupt change in scene or subject. For example, in the following poem, “February 25, 1755: Tom, A Negro,” the sonnet is split into four parts. While the four stanzas may represent the four sections of his body, it is also obvious that each section has a different topic: the crime, then the trial, then the punishment, and so on. “William Fly” does not have these changes and therefore, in keeping with McDonough’s style, is written entirely in one stanza. Another thing that could be said about the reason behind the single stanza is the pacing. William Fly’s own crime, sentencing, and punishment happened within a very short period of time. By not breaking up the poetry into separate stanzas, the tendency is to read through it more quickly, paralleling Fly’s story.
In the sonnet itself and the background information, McDonough leaves little out that is important for understanding. The additional research that I did simply acted to reinforce or more fully flesh out Fly’s situation; I did not find anything that seemed contradictory or changed my outlook on the events. However, once I knew more about Fly’s story, I was much more able to form an opinion about what McDonough’s point was.
McDonough does not glorify the death penalty in her book; each of the poems show us the darker side of it. She does not remain objective, necessarily, as she reports the facts in a biased way, but she shows her bias more in the cases she chooses to discuss rather than what she is reporting. Because the death penalty is legal in many places in the United States, Habeas Corpus can certainly be viewed a protest. McDonough’s protest, in my opinion, directly ties in with the protest of William Fly. The History Cooperative stated that William Fly’s “last breath was a protest” and that he was “launched into eternity with mutiny on his lips.”
The interesting thing about this parallel, though, is not that it is simply present. What is important is what McDonough seems to be saying about the futility of words. Fly’s words, in a sense, were futile. Perhaps, then, McDonough sees her own words as futile as well. My research showed that Cotton Mather meant to make an example of William Fly to colonists in America at the time. Fly did not agree with Mather’s beliefs, and therefore made a kind of martyr of himself by refusing to back down. Fly, ironically, in death, became the example he refused to be in life. By refusing to repent so adamantly, he made a huge spectacle of himself, and then became a more effective example because everyone knew his story. By protesting, because he was ultimately defeated, he did the opposite of what he wanted to do. I believe that in choosing this story with a protest that parallels her own, McDonough is possibly making a statement about her own powerlessness. She can write dozens of poems about the death penalty, but the powerful will twist words into what they want them to mean, and to benefit them. This raises the question: is it futile to keep trying, even if you know it might not change anything? This is the most important idea in this poem. I think McDonough answers this question for us, though. In completing the book and publishing it, and including William Fly’s story, I think she believes that is worth trying and asserting your beliefs, even if it falls on deaf ears, or your words are ultimately used against you.
