levelheaded: liminal spaces

This poem is one half of a conversation. It’s a monologue minus the drama. Its conversational quality creates a false triviality. It keeps its tone light and its language simple. But we’d say its tone belies its subject. There’s something important underneath.

First, what are the poem’s “liminal spaces?” The poem is pretty clear these “spaces” represent, as we’d expect, a sort of transitional place between two events or states of mind. Take the “re- / stored shelving” from early in the poem. There’s a time before the shelves have been restored, and there’s a time after. But there’s also a “liminal space” – in this case, a kind of mental state – where the speaker asks, “how can you really / see how sturdy / it will become?”

That question summarizes the speaker’s feelings about “liminal spaces.” They stand in for a minor unknown. In each of the poem’s examples, the speaker is only moderately afraid of a set of overlooked consequences. Stepping into a foggy street, for instance, may give someone pause, but it is unlikely they’ll seize up and be stuck on the street corner for hours waiting for the fog to burn off. Likewise, speaking to a stranger on a train can be nerve-wracking, but that’s all it is. The stakes are low.

But maybe the poem’s low stakes transitions are substitutes for the possibility of high stakes transitions. At the end of poem, there is a sense that “not really / knowing what / you’re stepping through” could mean you’re stepping around metaphorical rattlesnakes. Everything is going great amidst the “autumn / leaves” and “crinkly brown / taffeta” until the unknown comes rushing up to tear the world down around you. Maybe the shelves and the fog and the strangers coalesce into a scarier place then we initially think. What’s more, each time we name, identify, or pass through one of these “liminal spaces,” there are two more waiting for us on the other side.

-The Editors