A.E. STALLINGS, “FISHING” and DEER CREEK STATE PARK, MT. STERLING, OHIO

A.E. Stallings usually or always writes poems in fixed form, and “Fishing” is a good example. In fact, I’d guess she wants it to be an Italian sonnet, although I don’t see the poem’s turn happening until Line 11 or 13, rather than the traditional shift at line 9, creating an octave (8 lines) and a responding sestet (6 lines).  The final two lines of “Fishing” have some of the feel of the rhymed couplets that conclude Shakespearean sonnets, but of course, they aren’t rhymed.

Fishing by A.E. Stallings : Poetry Magazine

Well, whether it’s Italian or Shakespearean or no sonnet at all, I think Ms. Stallings has given us a fine poem for 12 lines. My favorite images are “The sun . . .  sweating gold,” the “sullen summer of father and daughter,” and above all, the father’s lesson: “cast towards  shadows where the sunlight fails.” That’s where the hidden prizes live, the sheltered fish—in the dark parts of the world, the amorphous and mysterious areas, not in the clearly defined facts or rules or measurements that sunlight inflicts upon us, forcing us to see. I hear this sunlight as math, as policy, as religious doctrine, for example. Such brightness might be the best disinfectant, but eventually it fails because the fishes shelter in the undergrowth, in complexity, in murky doubt and contradiction.

 

Those shadows are the place from which “the unseen strikes,” along with a life and death struggle. Isn’t it usually the strikes of “the unseen” that matter most? However symbolically or literally one wants to read those lines, they make an important, powerful point about the nature of discovery. If a sheltered fish, or peace between a father and daughter, or any other experience is worth pursuing, it’s likely to produce a struggle that will at least seem a matter of life and death.

Lines 1 – 12 suggest all this very nicely, but I find the poem's final two or three lines a bit disappointing. They’re not bad poetry, but I don’t see what they add that hasn’t already been covered—and covered more effectively. I could have lived happily without the play on “scales”—fish scales and the scales of justice, of right and wrong. And I’m not ecstatic about the multipurpose “them” in the final line; it could refer to father and daughter or human and fish or life and death or all of the above, and more; but I thought I’d already pretty much sensed as much in the events and imagery of lines 1 – 12.

 

That’s a minor quibble about a fine poem, but I wonder if it illustrates a larger point about fixed form: in an effort to fulfill requirements—in this case, the rules or customs of a sonnet—the best parts of a good poem can be diminished by so-so lines that exist primarily to obey some demand of form. Of course, those same demands of form can force a poet into wonderful turns of phrase and thought that would've never occurred otherwise. It's a two-edged sword if ever there was one.

But in the end, would we rather have an excellent poem or a merely adequate sonnet or villanelle? Of course, the poet, through luck and skill, can sometimes have her cake and eat it too. But sometimes she has to choose. I wonder if that’s what's happened in the last two lines of “Fishing,” though I'm grateful for the first ten or twelve.

The photos are from a short trip to Deer Creek State Park, near Mt. Sterling, Ohio, 30 miles south of Columbus. The morning temps were high 30s to mid 40s, but there were always three or four small boats out, pairs of humans fishing the shallows, casting into the shadows.

Fishing by A.E. Stallings : Poetry Magazine