Rising from the stew...

I was introduced to the poetry of Robert W. Service by Jean Shepherd, who used to recite some of it during his evening broadcasts on WOR radio in New York. More recently, I ran across an album of Shepherd's devoted to poems by Robert W. Service, and I enjoy listening to them.

One of the best known of Service's poems is The Shooting of Dan McGrew, the ending of which has always bothered me. The last stanza goes:

Those are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two —
The woman that kissed him and — pinched his poke — was the lady that's known as Lou.

This stanza comes immediately after the climax of the poem in which "the stranger" has declared McGrew to be "a hound from hell," the lights go out, guns blaze in the dark, a woman screams, and the lights come back on, whereupon "the stranger" and Dan McGrew turn up dead.

The narrator's words in this stanza have always struck me as a very strange way of ending the poem. First he establishes himself as an authority. Then he tells us what "they" (the lawyers) say, and so much as tells us he doesn't believe a word of it, damning the lawyers with faint praise in the process.

Finally, he strikes a confidential tone as he shares just one thing strictly between himself and the listener. By calling attention to the woman 'known as Lou' and what she did in the aftermath of the shooting, I'm increasingly becoming convinced that Service clearly intended the reader/listener to conclude that Lou killed Dan McGrew.

Cheers...