Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Bob Hicok’s "Full Flight" is an uneasy meditation on post-9/11 America, where the act of flying—once an exhilarating promise of modernity—has been irrevocably stained by history. The poem hovers between the personal and the political, between memory and the present, between the ordinary experience of sitting in a plane and the broader, more unsettling reality of war, revenge, and national identity. Hicok’s characteristic style—fluid yet fragmentary, observational yet deeply introspective—transforms this flight into a symbolic journey through American grief, anger, and the uneasy return to normalcy.

The poem begins with a blunt assertion of safety: "I’m in a plane that will not be flown into a building." This immediately places the speaker’s consciousness within the shadow of 9/11, framing the entire flight through the lens of collective trauma. The casual, almost offhand phrasing belies the weight of the statement, revealing how fear has been internalized into the everyday. The specific mention of a "SAAB 340, seats 40, has two engines with propellers" underscores this awareness—it is not a large, ominous jet, but a small, unassuming aircraft, a reassurance that this is not that kind of plane.

From here, the speaker’s mind drifts into memory and metaphor: "I think of beanies, those hats that would spin / a young head into the clouds." This nostalgic, almost whimsical image of childhood innocence sharply contrasts with the dark undercurrent of the poem. It introduces a tension between a past in which flight was a source of wonder and a present in which it is a source of anxiety.

The color red becomes a motif, tying together different strands of imagery: "The plane is red and loud inside like it must be loud in the heart, red like fire / and fire engines." The heart, fire, emergency—these associations build a quiet dread, linking the airplane not just to mechanical movement but to catastrophe. This unease intensifies when the speaker notices a woman two seats away: "the woman two seats up and to the right / resembles one of the widows I saw on TV after the Towers / came down." Here, grief is carried forward, the face of loss still recognizable years later. The poem suggests that, even in ordinary moments, the trauma of that day continues to surface, appearing unexpectedly in the details of a stranger’s hair.

Hicok’s attention to her hairstyle—"its obedience to an ideal, the shape / it was asked several hours ago to hold and has held"—extends this meditation on structure and permanence. Like national memory, the hair maintains its form, a visual metaphor for resilience, conformity, or even suppression. The wave pattern of her hair mirrors the waves of memory and consequence, reinforcing the idea that nothing is static—everything is shaped by impact, even if the shaping is invisible.

The poem then shifts outward, observing the mundane activities of fellow passengers: "People are typing at their laps, blowing across the fog of coffee, / sleeping with their heads on the windows." The world below them—"the pattern / of green fields and brown fields, streams and gas stations / and swimming pools, blue dots of aquamarine that suggest / we’ve domesticated the mirage."—suggests an America that is still intact, still functioning, still recognizable despite the fractures within. The phrase "domesticated the mirage" is particularly striking—America has tamed the illusion of stability, has convinced itself that life has returned to normal. But has it?

Then, the speaker delivers an unsettling admission: "We had to kill someone, / I believe, when the metal bones burned and the top / fell through the bottom and a cloud made of dust and memos / and skin muscled across Manhattan." This is where the poem’s emotional core fully emerges. The destruction of the Towers is described not only in terms of metal and dust, but also "memos and skin," blending the corporate and the human, the everyday and the horrific. The speaker’s use of "we had to kill someone" is not rhetorical; it exposes the moral dilemma at the heart of the American response. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a desire for vengeance took shape, but was it justice? Was it necessity? Or was it just the reflex of a wounded nation?

Hicok captures the emotional paradox of retaliation: "I remember feeling / I could finally touch a rifle, that some murders / are an illumination of ethics." The phrase "an illumination of ethics" is deeply ambiguous—does violence clarify morality, or does it expose its contradictions? The speaker acknowledges that, in the raw aftermath of tragedy, violence can feel like the only response that makes sense. And yet, there is no easy resolution, no satisfaction in what follows.

The poem pivots to a moment of national reflection: "The moment the planes had stopped, / when we were afraid of the sky, there was a pause / when we could have been perfectly American." This pause is significant—a rare moment when America had the opportunity to redefine itself, to choose a path not dictated by immediate retribution. Hicok presents an alternative: "We could have spent infinity dollars and thrown a million / bodies at finding the few, lasering our revenge / into a kind of love." This hypothetical scenario suggests a justice not born of indiscriminate war but of precision, restraint, and moral clarity. But instead, "we are punch-drunk and getting even / with the sand, with the map, with oil, with ourselves." The war has lost its purpose, the target has blurred, and now America fights against abstractions—geography, history, its own reflection.

As the plane continues its descent, the speaker listens to two men behind him discussing inventory control issues in Alpena. This mundane conversation—completely detached from the weight of war—serves as an ironic counterpoint. The men, "both likely born in New Delhi and probably Americans now," represent the true fabric of America—a nation built on immigration, on global identities. The phrase "a grafted pulse, an inventory / of the world" is one of the poem’s most hopeful moments, a recognition that America’s strength lies in its diversity, in its ability to integrate difference.

But just as this warmth takes hold, the poem ends abruptly: "And just as the idea of embrace / moves chemically into my blood, and I’m warmed / as if I’ve just taken a drink, a voice announces / we’ve begun our descent, and then I sense the falling." The speaker’s fleeting optimism is interrupted by the voice of authority, the reminder that the journey must return to the ground. The phrase "I sense the falling" carries a double meaning—it refers to the literal descent of the plane, but also to a larger, symbolic fall. America, too, has been descending, falling away from what it could have been in the aftermath of 9/11, from the moral clarity it might have chosen.

Hicok’s "Full Flight" is an extraordinary meditation on post-9/11 America, where the act of flying becomes a microcosm of national identity—at once fragile, haunted, and desperate for direction. The poem resists easy conclusions, acknowledging both the necessity of self-defense and the tragedy of misplaced vengeance. By weaving together personal memory, political critique, and ordinary observation, Hicok captures a country still in transit, still searching for the right altitude, still unsure whether it is flying or falling.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...