Sad Little Outlaw

I’ve read through a lot of the Dickman book. Most of what I have read can be summed up in “Sad Little Outlaw”. He is trying to make some sort of point about American soldiers relating to captured outlaws. However, I am absolutely lost as to what the point is supposed to arouse in the reader and what the relation between the two things are. I understand that poetry is supposed to be, well… poetic, but much of what I read in his poems seem to have nothing to do with what the poem is supposed to be about, whether I can figure that out or not is a completely different story.
I’m fine with being confused. With people acting the way they do, I’m confused regularly. What I do mind is that some of Dickman’s poems drive toward some sort of emphatic point, only to pull over to the side of the road and stall just before reaching the destination. This isn’t in a story telling kind of way. I guess the stories are told, but the emotion behind “Sad Little Outlaw” is confusing, and the goal of the poem is lost to me.
There is a part of the poem that actually angers me. Dickman uses the description of folding an American flag in an attempt to encourage an emotion from the viewer. And in doing so, he manages to lessen the visual and make it seem cheap. I don’t agree with using ideas that invoke an automatic emotional response as a way to manipulate the reader to a specific end that doesn’t appear to be related to the manipulated idea.
I don’t get most poetry, and maybe that is my downfall here. It isn’t that I’m above it, or impervious to its effects, most of it just doesn’t speak to me. And, in the case of “Sad Little Outlaw,” it actually kind of pisses me off.
D. Ryan