Question

In the first line, Hayden mentions Selma. This is a reference to the 1965 civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, in which nonviolent protestors were attacked by police.

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene great picture that I love.

–“Monet’s ‘Waterlilies,’”
Robert Hayden

What type of figurative language is the use of the word Selma here?

How does this example of figurative language affect the last line of the stanza?

Answer 1

The reference to Selma is an allusion — a brief historical allusion to the 1965 civil‑rights march (and the violent attack on peaceful demonstrators) that evokes that event and its moral weight without explicit explanation.

That allusion taints the poem’s opening lines with real, urgent violence and creates a sharp contrast with the final line. By invoking Selma (and “Saigon”) the speaker sets up a moral and emotional crisis that makes the “serene great picture that I love” read as refuge, consolation, or an act of resistance — but also as poignantly fragile. The serenity of the painting is deepened and made more meaningful by contrast, yet the surrounding news “poisons the air,” so the calm is also qualified and edged with irony: the speaker seeks solace in art, but the peace of the painting is shadowed by the world’s violence.