Woodchucks

“Woodchucks” maintains a tone that works in two registers; initially, the poem seems like a tongue-in-cheek recounting of a gardener’s encounters with woodchucks who eat the plants in the garden, but the allegorical topic of the poem creates a darker, more upsetting tone. The poem's opening line embodies this duality. The phrase “Gassing the woodchucks” (Line 1) is quite horrifying, but its effect is dampened by the phrase “didn’t turn out right” (Line 1), which is comically understated to allow the reader to empathize with the speaker’s struggle with pests.

At first, the speaker attempts to kill the woodchucks with a “knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange” (Line 2). The speaker describes this method as “merciful, quick at the bone” (Line 3) to justify the choice, showing that the speaker is trying to handle the animals humanely. The insistence that “the case we had against them was airtight” (Line 4) has a double meaning; first, it describes the physical contraption that should contain the poison gas, and second, it validates the speaker’s actions, suggesting how the speaker has spent time trying to solve the problem and catch the actual culprits.

Despite the speaker’s thoroughness in ensuring “both exits [were] shoehorned shut with puddingstone” (Line 5), the woodchucks survive. Their escape suggests nature’s resilience, as they “turned up again, no worse” (Line 7) the next morning. The speaker and the woodchucks are compared to each other, in that the woodchucks were “no worse / for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes / and state-store Scotch” (Lines 7-9), which humanizes the woodchucks. Through an ecocritical lens, humans and woodchucks are equally alive and equally important. Through an allegorical lens, this comparison humanizes the other, suggesting that both persecutor and persecuted are fundamentally the same.

The speaker’s feelings of justification in her actions quickly evolve into “righteously thrilling” (Line 13) at both explaining that logic and killing. The woodchucks take “food from our mouths” (Line 13), which includes the reader in the speaker's logic and implicates the reader in the speaker’s actions.

The tone of the poem begins to shift as the speaker begins to relish in “the feel of the .22, the bullets’ neat noses” (Line 14). The speaker is no longer a “pacifist” (Line 15), suggesting that their actions now carry a murderous intent. The speaker now uses Darwinism as “pieties for killing” (Line 16). The speaker has “fallen from grace” (Line 15) but still views killing as a religious act.

To describe the speaker’s first kill, Kumin uses the simple and direct sentence, “He died down in the everbearing roses” (Line 18). The use of the pronoun “he” instead of the pronoun “it” personifies the woodchuck. Rather than being a pest, the woodchuck is humanized. The finality of his death is contrasted with the “everbearing roses” (Line 18) that his body rests in.

The stanza break underscores the “[t]en minutes” (Line 19) time jump, emphasizing how the speaker actively chooses to continue the hunt. Kumin continues to personify the woodchucks, calling the next two woodchucks “mother” (Line 19) and “baby” (Line 22). Kumin’s word choice emphasizes the brutality of the violence, further creating a darker tone. The female woodchuck “flipflopped in the air and fell” (Line 20). The curtness of the three-word phrase describing the slaughtering of the baby is callous—“Another baby next” (Line 22)—the death not even warranting a full sentence. The speaker’s violence is not completely a product of outside influence; killing allows “the murderer inside” (Line 23) to appear and hunt with “hawkeye” (Line 24) precision.

The last stanza describes the speaker’s hunt for the last woodchuck. Unlike the shorter passage of time between Stanzas 3 and 4, this stanza describes the passage of “day after day after day” (Line 26). This repetition emphasizes the speaker’s repeated choice to attempt to kill the animal. Described as an “[o]ld wily fellow” (Line 25), he challenges the speaker despite his age. The speaker becomes like the weapon, “cocked and ready” (Line 26) to kill the animal. This fusion of killer and weapon highlights the speaker’s responsibility for taking these actions. The speaker’s culpability is not grammatically obscured by differentiation between actor and action.

The poem ends with a startling statement that strips away the last remnants of a light, playful tone. In direct and simple language, the speaker wishes, “If only they’d all consented to die unseen / gassed underground the quiet Nazi way” (Lines 29-30). The allegorical meaning of the Holocaust becomes explicit, and the woodchucks are a symbol of the Jewish people who were persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler viewed Jewish people as “pests” he wanted to eradicate, rather than human beings worthy of kindness, compassion, and respect. Similarly, the speaker views the woodchucks as pests in the garden that need to be eradicated.

However, the focus of the last two lines of the poem is not on defending the victims, who are undeniably innocent, but rather on revealing how the speaker and the speaker’s actions compare to the Nazis. Kumin’s thematic concerns are centered on encouraging people to think about and reject radicalization that can lead to genocide. The ironic selection of the word “consented” (Line 29) emphasizes those who are choosing to participate in murder; the speaker and all collaborators are the ones who consented. Just because the acts of evil might be “unseen” (Line 29), Kumin argues that everyone should choose resistance.