Waterman

Waterman surfaces in the same poetic terrain as the one-eyed cadet and the poet who demands his portrait from a reluctant 'Mat,' a world where contracts are broken, critics are mocked, and ambition is its own punishment. His name carries the watery, drifting quality of Bierce's minor figures — men whose significance lies less in what they do than in what they represent about the poet's dim view of his contemporaries. He matters as part of the chorus of the disappointed and the self-important that gives the collection its distinctive, sardonic texture.