Whethering by A.E. Stalling + a few thoughts on Poetry.

 Whethering by A.E. Stalling + a few thoughts on Poetry.

Ted Kooser believes that poetry is communication.  "Poetry’s purpose is to reach other people and to touch their hearts. If a poem doesn’t make sense to anybody but its author, nobody but its author will care a whit about it. That doesn’t mean that your poems can’t be cryptic, or elusive, or ambiguous if that’s how you want to write, as long as you keep in mind that there’s somebody on the other end of the communication. I favor poems that keep the obstacles between you and that person to a minimum."

That said, when an intriguing but puzzling poem comes up, I find it special when readers take the time to think deeply about it.  I should have asked, Why did you take the extra time to delve into this poem?

For me, it started with a colleague curious about finding out a rhyme scheme, because he sensed a structure, but it didn't follow a pattern. my reply : For sure, there are repeating words, repeating sounds, and playing with placement is the beauty of crafting... what turns a haphazard "make it up as you go along" into next versionrevised. I find her creation of "belates" as verb which rhymes with precipitates, both verbs isolated as soloists on a line, underscores the depth of her other neologism, "whethering". 

Sure, rain as preciptation... but can also mean "rush into" -- and what a beautiful contradiction, of "belatedly" i.e., not right away, considering the possibilities of former voices now ghosts, the "late so and so" no longer alive... but whose voice can still be here.

The poem is filled with "haunting" meditatation on the sounds of rain, and, I'm only hazarding a guess here... the rhyme here, tucked in on the same line as in "softer, clearer", or as echoes but in unexpected places, such as end rhyme, Haunted, on the first line, repeated as first word, 2nd line of the final stanza, and the delay of shed gently underscores a letting go of thinking we understand anything. The final two lines elaborate on the "haunting" of all we don't know. That her kids are sound/asleep, is an extra pun on sound. (as in safe and sound...)

Perhaps the conceit of the poem is to take rain, and after considering all the choices we could make to describe the sounds, and go back full circle to the title. She is "whethering" with weather providing rain.

Eddy's  response: 

One of my first impressions of the poem is that the first two lines are neat and rhythmical - which only seem to be matched by the last two lines - then the next lines of the stanza seem to be different both in syllables and rhythm; to me, this contributes to the overall feeling of the poem as quite complicated. The jarring line for me is “The kids lie buried under duvets, sound / asleep.” That line break felt significant, and I wonder if even the verb “buried” is not so innocuous as she later ruminates about the dead. Later, is there another double meaning with “reflection / holds up a glass of spirits” - reflection as in a mirror and also self-reflection - and “white noise” - the sound of rain could sound like white noise but also it seems like there’s white noise going on in her mind, this process of recollecting with the rain all the “shed[ding] / Hissing indignantly into the ground.”

 

 I am a bit stumped by her last stanza beginning with “It is the listening / belates” - is she listening to her mind, or listening to that voice she writes about at the beginning of the poem? It seems like the final turn in the poem. 

Kathy:

Kathy's view of Stallings:

Ay thoughts about the poem "Whethering": I think Stallings is incredible with each word carefully chosen to contribute to the whole of the poem. You could do such a close reading that would include almost every word. But then you'd become like a centipede who, if you told him how to move each of his 100 legs he would stumble, unable to walk, maybe

fall over dead. So I don't want to kill the poem. :) Also, I have built my understanding of what the poem "means" to me around the concept of "doubt" so I'm probably guilty of the saying, "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail!"

Thanks, Kathy

Whethering by A.E. Stallings verb expressing doubt or indecision about choices

 

The rain is haunted;   dark tone, rain stirs "something" from subconscious

I had forgotten. My children are two hours abed

And yet rise

Hearing behind the typing of the rain,

 

Its abacus and digits,

A voice calling me again,

Softer, clearer. 

The kids lie buried under duvets, sound

Asleep. It isn't them I hear, it's

 

Something formless that fidgets that "something " that becomes clearer: is a questioning of past decisions

Beyond the window's benighted mirror,         overtaken by darkness                         

Where a negative develops, where reflection

Holds up a glass of spirits. i.e. the dead people and past decisions containing many frequencies with equal 

White noise                                                                             intensities.

 

Precipitates. a solid forms and settles out of a murky liquid this is where the whethering happens

Rain is a kind of recollection.

Much has been shed, 

Hissing indignantly into the ground. anger or annoyance at what is perceived as unfair, she feels judged

It is the listening that causes, enables, this late questioning of the past decisions, (Regrets??)

 

Belates, causes something to be late

Haunted by these finger taps and sighs E.A. Poe While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping

Behind the beaded-curtain glistening, 

As though by choices that we didn't make and never wanted,

As though by the dead and misbegotten. badly conceived, planned., can be a person, the speaker                                                 the poem) whose life is based on some poor choices !!!!!!!!!

- from her book Like (2018)

 

 

Kathy

knowing Stallings work and another poem, "Lost and Found" from her book Like she often probes issues of children and family

which she then widens to larger concepts. In Whethering, I love that as the rain falls, the slow percolating of her doubts rise from her subconscious (just as she literally, physically rises to check on her

children 

Polly: whethering: considering alternatives.  

but one can also "weather" a storm... one is not in control of voices, consciousness... 

White noise... the noise in her head... 

White noise... noise that cannot be identified... Judith gave the example of a dance choreography of the tide coming in. 

Hearing the poem, it resembles a nocturnal poem... perhaps a ritual... the kids are elsewhere, and she merges with the rain.