Weldon 1

Chris Weldon

Professor Orta

Critical Thinking: Comp & Lit - 5015

15 February 2020

Reader Response 1: Fright at 4

Powerful language can convey emotions greatly. The Quilt Series by Gil Cuadros covers

this and in “4AM”​ ​that really settles in. This is the fifth poem of a six poem cycle, this is the

climax of the series. The poem dives into the final moments of the narrator’s time while John is

alive. The imagery in this poem is incredible, every time I read it I feel as if I’m standing in the

room with the narrator as he retells. We know John doesn’t have much time left. Considering

what we know about late night calls and news surrounding a medical condition, it’s typically not

good - no matter what it might be. The previous works have all been leading up to this.

The purpose of this poem was to give us the news that John has officially passed and

that our narrator is about to lose him. Early in the poem, the narrator is in a stable state of being,

yes he’s going through this in his head, thinking about how he wants to spend this final moment

with John and how he’s going to get through this and what comes next. He spends some time

reminiscing, being at the end of this road, at the final, hardest spot - how can he not? There’s

this mix of emotion, excitement that he’ll at least see John this last time, and heartache. The

phone rings a second time and that changes everything. That’s when denial steps in, the

emotion comes crawling in and the narrator finds himself all alone, his love is gone. Dealing with

something like that is so hard and we see the narrator in a really bad place at this point. At this

point, all there is, is darkness, sadness, and bitterness. The purpose of this poem is to show

how hard a loss like this truly is, how awful life gets at that moment.
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The descriptive language in the poem really helps set the scene. A real example of this

is in this poem

“...the red sweater, the one he loves,

the one he bought me for my birthday.

My arms slipped through the heavy knots

and it seemed like hours since I called

but it had only been minutes.” (Cuadros, 133)

The author uses imagery in this sentence with his arms slipping through the heavy knots of this

red sweater. Imagery is the visual representation of a feeling, impression, emotion, action, or

idea. It’s what we can see in our minds as we read or listen to a text or piece of media. In this

line I can vividly see the narrator receive this red sweater from John and put it on, moving his

arms through the heavy knots. We can see that this red sweater is something the narrator really

loves, and it’s John who got it for him. Sweaters are a common gift couples give one another.

The simplest gifts can mean so much to a couple, this red sweater the narrator is referring to is

more than just a sweater, this speaks about their relationship. This is a powerful moment for

him. There’s also a sense of characterization from this sentence. It’s a vision of John and a look

into what kind of man John was. We’re able to understand that John and the narrator had a

strong relationship with one another.

If you continue on reading into the next sentence, you can see that the author uses

another poetic device, a flashback. As the narrator is preparing to go see John for the final time,

he begins to flashback to a time he had with John. A flashback is a pause in real time and

chronology in a story to describe or present something that took place outside of the time frame

of the story to add an effect, make sense of something, present an anecdote, or represent

something. The narrator says

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“In those minutes I’d relived our first kiss,

his arms around me

and the small ceremony

where we exchanged rings

and he gave me mine in a box,

wrapped inside another,

five in all.” (Cuadros, 133-134)

As the narrator is in this process of getting ready and dealing with these emotions, he finds

himself going back to some of these places and reflecting on what their life together was like.

This poem is a reflection of what the narrator’s life was like with John. He flashes back to 2

different times in their relationship, and based on what they’re about we can infer that these

were probably the most significant events in their relationship, the first kiss and the ceremony of

ring exchange. The narrator is going back through the highlights of their lives and thinking about

his best times with John.

“4AM” ​is a very powerful poem. Considering everything we’ve read in the series up to

this point, we know something to do with 4AM is most likely not going to be a good thing. We’re

reading the lines of emotion and thoughts going through the narrator’s head, the imagery of this

is very surreal. I chose to look at this poem because of the vivid language, the wide mixture of

poetic devices used, and because I know how powerful one of these moments is. It’s not often

that you get a good call at 4 o’clock in the morning, especially back when this poem was set

into, there weren't cell phones. A phone going off at that time in those days, not common. When

getting that news, you want to go back and flashback, you want to have these visions of what

things were like and you want to deny what’s happening. The ending of this poem leaves me

with numerous questions. “4AM sharp and I began to howl” (Cuadros, 134) - what exactly does
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he mean by this? Is he letting out a cry of depression? The narrator also says that “the pain was

too much to forget.” (Cuadros, 134) How will he move on from this horrible experience? Was the

pain too much to forget that he’ll always be thinking about it? Is the pain too much that he

cannot live on? In reading this, I simply wonder how the narrator will move on from such a

nightmare, from such a rough spot. It seems he feels alone, he doesn’t know what he’ll do next.

Frightened and hurt.

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Work Cited

Cuadros, Gil. City of God. City Lights, 1994.