When There Were Ghosts

“When There Were Ghosts” presents a description of how identity is formed through blending various elements. These elements include the past and the present as well as national identities. The past is represented in that the theme begins with specific dates in the past: “the 1950s and ‘60s” (Line 1). The speaker is haunted by the past, and it is a familiar story he tells the reader. The movie theater audience shares a small part of this sensation of familiarity because they—like the speaker—know the story in advance. They “knew what would happen next / Before it did” happen (Lines 11-12). This foreknowledge is presented by the projection of the movie hitting cigarette smoke before the screen and creating “ghosts” (Line 10).

The audience of the movie theater, like the speaker, is haunted. However, the ghosts in the theater tell the audience about the future (or have a divinatory quality). Their future is the past for the poet and his audience from the 2010s. Time is blended, and this blending is part of identity formation, because what the speaker experienced in the past influences their perspective and development as a person.

The pattern of pronouns used throughout the poem further emphasizes this blending.