That
It will be higher to not be
that fly — the fly that sees
in stereo
what occurs
that day
and, for that matter, all the times
earlier than and after that.
The issue for
the fly is
that that
wall is simply too near different partitions,
producing that impact
of entrapment
one feels in
a field
that’s been shut with out a plan for
who will open it and
when. Is that my
head? wonders
the fly,
listening to ideas tick like an heirloom
in a room the place the large
gentle’s been left on
by mistake —
like that,
like that, like that, like that, like that,
like that, like that, like that,
like that, like that,
like that, like
that, like
Syllabic writing can curiously disrupt a poem’s floor, producing line-breaks and syntactical jolts that may’t be anticipated. However these results have to work with the poem, improve or purposely not improve the thought, in order that each the disruptions and the possibility moments of metrical regularity combine with the entire imaginative and prescient. This sort of holistic syllabic writing is cleverly achieved within the poem of this week, That, from Rebecca Watts’s newest assortment The Face within the Effectively.
It’s a poem to take heed to earlier than you begin understanding the sample. What you first hear is the repetition of the phrase “that” in varied grammatical types. It happens thrice within the first stanza and 4 occasions within the second. At this stage, it’d merely counsel a bit of deft wordplay to be filed underneath “gentle verse”. However this may altogether miss the poet’s intentions. Because the repetition mounts, “that” turns into a vital and unnerving auditory impact. The “tick” of the consonants because the phrase performs its varied roles – determiner, conjunction, relative pronoun, intensifier – resembles the small, distinct, unnervingly irregular sound of a fly hitting a window or wall in attempting to flee from a room.
The assertion of the fly’s predicament isn’t any joke: “It will be higher to not be/ that fly — the fly that sees/ in stereo/ what occurs/ that day// and, for that matter, all the times/ earlier than and after that.” Watts’s reference to the “stereophonic” compound imaginative and prescient of the house-fly, captured on this {photograph}, factors out, casually, importantly, a exceptional adaptation of the species, however one that may’t assist this explicit fly’s survival. It’s trapped in an enclosed area, and in time, the place “that day” is a part of an endless chain of days.
This fly shouldn’t be a fly-on-the-wall, however nonetheless a fly with a well-realised consciousness. It’s conscious, with an consciousness maybe solely barely totally different from the speaker’s, of the actual fact “that that// wall is simply too near different partitions…” The sentence starting with “the issue for the fly” jolts towards the syllabic partitions of the stanzas throughout which it strikes. Area appears to shrink, and the fly in a room turns into a fly in a field. When the sentence ends, the fly thinks ‘Is that my/ head?’ – and what might need been a second of comedy is overturned by the sense of panicked disorientation. There’s no assist from the demonstrative “that” when “that’s” turns into “is that…?”
The fly, whereas beating out its brains, hears “ideas tick like an heirloom/ in a room the place the large/ gentle’s been left on/ by mistake — like that…” and this enlargement, the field now once more a room, is frighteningly imagined. The heirloom is insistently current. It might be a clock, however it ticks like a time-bomb. The “massive gentle” blazes relentlessly. No residing creature is current besides the fly.
Is the fly an individual? It represents, I feel, a thoughts which is trapped, which is aware of solely the burden of household, inheritance and time (symbolised by that heirloom), and partitions of assorted sorts. By means of the fly, the poem enacts a life-or-death want to flee. That is virtually the antithesis of the title-poem, the place the face the speaker sees and recognises as their very own on the backside of the nicely presents liberation and rightness of location: “Loneliness and worry and all of the disgrace/ that dutifully feeds them flowed away.// I didn’t have to listen to my voice thrown again/ to know the face was all the time there,// at dwelling deep down, linked to the supply,/ needing a mirrored image to make it stay.”
There is no such thing as a self-saving reflection in That: solely the onerous density of the edges of the field or the partitions of a locked room, solely a head filled with good eyes accosted by inexorable “that-ness”. The poem stands by itself, however readers might discover the philosophical idea of Haecceity (‘This-ness’) a helpful connection.
Lastly, the phrase “like that” shuts down each different verbal escape route. And, as sources shrink to their essence, the 8,6,4,3,2 syllabic stanza sample describes the shrinkage with the utmost depth. The even numbers of syllables within the first three traces make a bit of breathing-pace as a result of they name up metrical constructions (iambic tetrameter, trimeter and dimeter) however in fact this breaks down with the three-syllable fourth line. Now the rhythm of repeated motion has disintegrated, and the fly appears to have misplaced its final shred of comprehension “like that, like/ that, like”.
Rebecca Watts has written an uncommon and compelling poem. Ruthlessly centered, unfalteringly mimetic, it reveals her technical accomplishment at its boldest and greatest.
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