17 pages • 34 minutes read
Ada LimónA New National Anthem
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Star-Spangled Banner
Although the words “The Star-Spangled Banner” don’t appear explicitly in “A New National Anthem,” the song and the flag are both of central importance. The speaker capitalizes the words “National / Anthem” (Lines 1-2) to assure the reader that they are talking about the official song by Francis Scott Key, along with direct quotes from the first stanza in Lines 3-4 and the third stanza in Line 12.
In the first half of the poem, the song represents everything the speaker doesn’t like about ordinary American identity. She dislikes the constant presence of war and violence both in the song and in real life. She dislikes the ritual of performing the song that has rendered it meaningless, merely a “call / to the field” (Lines 8-9). People ignore the disturbing true meaning that’s actually in the song “as we blindly / sing the high notes” (Lines 15-16). The speaker disavows the song and the flag that represent war, ignorance, and empty rituals. In the second half of the poem, the speaker expresses fondness for a song and flag that could mean healing and unity. The flag she likes best is one that gives hope to someone who has lost everything. She likes a flag that doesn’t demand to be present just for the sake of being there, but can be folded “so perfectly / you can keep it until it’s needed” (Lines 22-23).
War
Battle motifs appear throughout “A New National Anthem.” Most explicitly, the poem references “war and bombs” (Lines 4, 5) in “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The speaker's lament about there “always, always” (Line 5) being “war and bombs” (Line 5) refers to the fact that those lyrics are always song as well as the frequency with which the United States engages in actual war. The poem also mentions the skirmishes of organized sports. The speaker sang the national anthem at “homecoming” (Line 8) before the team took “the field” (Line 9), while the crowd watches a “pummeling” (Line 10) “in the stands” (Line 16). Finally, the speaker references the internal battle between hope and despair. She describes someone who has lost everything clinging to the symbol of hope, on their knees with the flag. She describes people singing the national anthem “in silence when it’s too hard to go on” (Line 29) as a way to garner determination when hope is hard-won.
Nature
Limón’s speaker most strongly evokes the natural world in the poem’s most hopeful moments. Turning from her dislike for the national anthem, she describes the flag as it “undulates in the wind / like water, elemental” (Lines 18-19). The new song to accompany this flag feeds the living, breathing people of the country and “feels / like sustenance” (Lines 24-25). Eventually, the land joins in on this song. “The notes are sung” (Line 25) by woods and plains, gorges and untouched, “unpoisoned” (Line 28) spaces.
The poem expands beyond landscapes to cover long stretches of time. The new national anthem “sounds like a match being lit / in an endless cave” (Lines 32-33). A natural formation like a cave could be greater and longer than the most impressive manufactured structures. The symbolic endless cave of eternity is even greater, and the national anthem is an elemental deterrent against limitless darkness. According to this speaker, the United States is at its best when its most essential symbols are in harmony with the natural world.
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By Ada Limón
