levelheaded: I say erstwhile

At thirteen, be it age or maybe a location, Holly Amos’s speaker is “looking for rocks […] with a coat made of clouds.” In its coherent language, “I say erstwhile” sets us up to expect metaphors made of words that are easy to follow, and by doing so, gains our trust. That is not to say a coat of clouds isn’t enigmatic, but to suggest that the simplicity of “rocks,” “coat,” and “clouds,” frees us from quarrelling with the language (often a necessity with poetry) and encourages us to explore the image. Such is also the case of the speaker’s mind and its inner trees as they appear in the poem. Since trees don’t literally grow in brains, we easily recognize this is a metaphor, and allow ourselves to go ahead and explore it. In other words, when not intimidated, readers gain the opportunity to listen to a subtle voice and explore along with the speaker, as she explores the landscape of her mind.

What is in fact inside that mind? If not trees, the speaker suggests, perhaps the “hollow outlines of those I have thought to measure.” “Those” could be trees, but the pronoun maybe suggests people—those who the speaker has yet to understand (“measure,” weigh, figure out). The human subjects of the poem remain secretive—the “I” from the subject of whom we know little, the “you” that finds the speaker in the first sentence (which could be us, the readers), and the trees/people of the mind. There’s distance between everyone involved, which is also what the center (physical, poetic) of the poem states: “Our minds are all the same distance from one / another which is to say distant.”

Our distance declared, we face a sad moment in the poem. In order to go back to a hopeful track, all we need is a “but,” and it comes immediately: “But there is something tender embedded in being still alive” is hard to disagree with. And yet another change in tone follows. “[N]umb[ness]” comes in where it seems to represent pain. The “you” of the opening now strongly seems to not be the reader but a person—one who the speaker could not find. Literally, it is the movement of the hair that the speaker’s mind cannot locate. Metaphorically, we could guess a shift in the addressee created distance and lack of understanding in the speaker. Ending with “could not locate” echoes and negates the early utterance of “you find me.”

So we’re left with “distortion,” an unclear or unresolved feeling. Perhaps that is why the poem is titled with “erstwhile,” saying, “a find,” formerly a connection, ended with “distortion,” a disconnection. Without further clarity, we could conclude it is a poem of subtle, “hollow outlines.” Alternately, we could shift our eyes back to the center and feel the embedded tenderness.

– The Editors