"Fishing" by A.E. Stallings

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Sleerickets

-Poetry Says

-Fly poet Ernest Hilbert

-Versecraft for softies podcast Poetry Unbound

-Baumeister Dave Klug

-You can now email me!

-Even better, you can now send me money!

-The one and only Alicia Stallings

-Also great poets Joshua Mehigan and Shane McCrae

-Buy Alicia's book here!

-It's another sonnet, doggone it!

-Loosey goosey iambic lines

-Ave, Tertius Paeon

-Do I get Postmodernist windbag points for saying liminality?

-Get hype for hypallage!!

-Etymological trans-linguistic puns, boy

-The Four-fold method strikes back

-The unity of opposites

-Let's get diluvian

-Elizabeth Bishop's poem The Fish

-Robert Lowell's poem The Quaker Graveyard In Nantucket

-The best pun you've heard all week

-The Moirae make marionettes of us all

Text of poem:

Fishing

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails

And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.

And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales

Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,

Life and death weighed in the shining scales,

The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.

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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Transcript

Versecraft Episode 3-1: “Fishing” by A.E. Stallings

Hey everyone and welcome to Season 3 of Versecraft! To inaugurate Season 3 I do have some changes to ring in, but before I get to that I’d like to offer my continuous gratitude to all of you for listening, some of you as far back as the first episode, and also to those of you who’ve reached out recently to express your support for the show. This past week I received the most lovely and inspiring note from Matthew from Sleerickets regarding my Meter and Rhyme episodes, and I’m so touched and grateful for that. Alice from Poetry Says, certified sweetheart that she is, always has glowing words for every episode, so thank you so much Alice. A delightful surprise, I recently received word from the wonderful contemporary poet Ernest Hilbert expressing how much he loved the show. Thank you so much Ernest. As a great friend of Alicia, I hope you especially enjoy today’s episode. I also had another great in-person interaction at my store this week with one of my favorite regulars, Braveheart, who is a relatively new listener and came by specifically to tell me how much he was enjoying and learning from my show. Thank you so much man, and I hope you continue to find it enriching. Braveheart by the way is a huge fan of Padraig O Tuama’s massively popular podcast, Poetry Unbound, and let’s just say, if I can attract both the demographic that loves his show and the demographic that loves Sleerickets, then I think I’m doing pretty alright. 

I would be remiss not to also mention my dear friend Felipe, who first inspired my love of poetry and whom I had a wonderful phone call with last week about the show, as well as my dear friend David, who pushed me to start the show in the first place and who, in addition to designing my logo, has been my foremost champion since Day 1. David by the way is a fabulous craftsman, designer, and jeweler, and you can now find a link to his contracting website in my show notes, and you can also find his jewelry on Instagram at DaveKlugDesigns. Lastly, my eternal thanks to my always-supportive family, and to my fiancee Laura, whose love gives me strength every day to do what I do. Thank you all. 

I apologize for the Oscars speech, but I do think it was passed due. Versecraft has been seeing some real growth in the past month or so, and it’s entirely due to the efforts of you, my listeners. People really do seem to love the show, and I would invite you all, if you’re able, to take some time this week to tell just one friend about it whom you think might love it too. I really do appreciate it. 

For those of you wondering how on earth people have been getting in touch with me, it’s all been through personal connections thus far, but I’m pleased to announce that I now have an email specifically for the podcast, versecraftpodcast@gmail.com, where I invite you to leave any questions or comments you might have for me. Given my schedule, I can’t promise to respond immediately or at length to every email, but I will respond when I can, and you can rest assured that I appreciate and will read every single letter you care to send me. 

However, as Dave Navarro says, that is not all. One small new thing to notice is that I’ve added a key to metrical feet to the bottom of all my show notes. If you’re listening and you ever find yourself wondering what in God’s name a dactyl is, all you have to do is consult the chart and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. After looking at this chart week after week, pretty soon you’ll know the feet of accentual-syllabic prosody like the back of your hand. 

As every good infomercial says, “but wait, there’s more!” As you can probably guess, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to put Versecraft together every week– I absolutely love doing it, and the mission of the show is important enough to me that I always want to be able to offer it for free. That being said, it is a bit like having a second job, and as such, it would be wonderful to be able to get at least a little bit of financial compensation for it. 

As such, for those of you who love the show and would be interested in becoming its patrons, the Medicis of Versecraft, I’ve now heroically come up with several ways for you to give me money. In my show notes you’ll find a link to my new buymeacoffee page, www.buymeacoffee.com/versecraft  where you’ll find the option to either leave me a stand-alone tip, or subscribe to a monthly membership. If you’re feeling absurdly generous, you are of course free to purchase a membership and then leave additional tips later on if you’ve been particularly pleased by one of my episodes. 

If you’re interested in becoming a member, there are three tiers, distinguished not by benefits offered but purely by how much money you’re willing to part with and how cool the name of the tier is. For five dollars a month, you can join The Order of the Lyre. For ten dollars a month, you can join The Order of the Laurel. For a whopping fifteen dollars a month, you can join The Order of Orpheus. All of these can add some much needed pizzazz to your business cards. 

“But Elijah,” you will say, “I’m a practical man, or woman– surely there must be some benefit to being a member besides the cool name and the knowledge that I’m supporting your show?” Fear not, my eminently practical listener, for indeed there is. On that very same website, you’ll also find that I’m now offering a couple of services: for a price, I will write up an in-depth analysis of any poem of your choice: whether it be for a school assignment, impressing your colleagues at a cocktail party, or simply for your own nerdy pleasure, you will have the tools of Versecraft at your disposal. If instead, you’re seeking something a bit more creative and personal, you will also have the option of commissioning a poem from yours truly: whether for a wedding, a funeral, a lover, a friend, or yourself, I will write on any subject of your choice, and I guarantee you it will be a hell of a lot better than whatever you would get from ChatGPT. Members from all tiers will receive significant discount prices on both of these services. When I finally get some Versecraft merchandise together, which will hopefully be soon, members will receive discounts on these items as well. 

This has been more than enough marketing for one day, though– let’s get to what you’re all actually here for, the poetry. 

Today, we’re going to be looking at a poem by the living legend A.E. Stallings, otherwise known as Alicia Stallings; a poet who, alongside Joshua Mehigan and Shane McCrae, is perhaps the most celebrated poet writing today who works predominantly in meter and rhyme. You may remember Alicia from my Hopkins episode, where I discussed feedback she had given me on my previous Keats episode. She’s not only a fabulous poet but a fabulous human being, and I’m honored to be able to discuss her work today.

Stallings, who was born in 1968, is a classicist by training, who, after studying in Athens, Georgia, received her graduate degree at Oxford before settling down in Athens, Greece, where she works as the Poetry Program director of the Athens Center. As a classicist she’s produced several acclaimed translations, including versions of Hesiod’s Works and Days and Lucretius’s On The Nature of Things, and as an original poet has published five books, and received accolades ranging from a Guggenheim fellowship to a MacArthur Genius Grant to being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. For those of you unfamiliar with her work, her latest book, which came out just this year, is the perfect place to start: entitled This Afterlife, it’s her first collection of Selected Poems, and includes some of the best work of her previous four books. I’ll provide a link in the show notes where, if you’re so inclined, you can purchase her book from the bookshop where I work, right here in Cleveland. 

Stallings’ background in Classics has contributed enormously to her signature artistry. Not only has her decision to write in received forms been largely inspired by her admiration for the forms and meter of Greek and Latin poetry, but her poetry itself is remarkable for the way in which it blends mythological stories and tropes with modern scenes and concerns. Very roughly, and with many exceptions, I think you could divide Stallings’ lyric poetry into four general categories: firstly, there is the poetry which treats a scene of contemporary domestic life and inflects it with the language of Greek myth, transforming an otherwise mundane situation into one brimming with imaginative significance; secondly, there is the poetry which treats a story from Greek myth, and reimagines it with the language and psychology of modern life, thereby giving an old and famous story a rejuvenated pathos and immediacy that allows the reader to sympathize with ancient figures and link the story to their own life; thirdly, there are the poems which are based more purely on Stallings’ own personal reflections and memories; finally, there are what you might call Stallings’ metaphysical poems, poems which take a single object, word, idea, or conceit and wittily play around with it for all its worth, as in the tour-de-force sestina which serves as the title poem for her fourth book, “Like,” and the ode to olives which serves as the title poem for her third book, “Olives.” Beyond this, one might more generally characterize Stallings as a poet of dry wit and tender feeling, capable of ingenious wordplay, amused irony, sensitive observation, and devastating truth all in a single poem. 

Today’s poem, “Fishing,” comes from Stallings’ first book, Archaic Smile, and seems to fit most snugly into our third category, non-mythological poems of personal reflection. Upon analysis however, we will see that Grecian thinking never entirely escapes from Stallings’ poetry. The poem goes like this:

Fishing

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails

And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.

And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales

Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,

Life and death weighed in the shining scales,

The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.

A quick glance at the rhyme scheme will inform us that we’re working with an Italian sonnet: two quatrains of ABBA, separated by the reiteration of the pattern but linked by their common rhymes, form the octet, and the following six lines CDC, DCD, are linked by terza rima inversion to form the sestet. Though the rhymes themselves are different, you might recall that this is the exact same scheme of rhymes used in Keats’s Italian sonnet several episodes back. Both feature the most enclosed form of the Italian sonnet possible: Every tercet and quatrain is distinguished by one pair of rhymes forming a border around one or two other lines. Both sonically and visually, this adds a subtle effect of concentration and insularity to the poem, emphasizing its status as an interior meditation despite its outdoor subject matter. 

Now let me briefly digress to address the elephant in the room. At this point you’re probably thinking: “why is this, like, the five billionth sonnet he’s analyzed?” It might surprise you to know that this phenomenon is actually completely unintentional, and every time I notice I’ve unwittingly chosen yet another sonnet, I become more intrigued. There are probably a number of factors at play here: the first is that a sonnet is the perfect length of poem to analyze on this show, so immediately when I see one I see it as the right shape and length to be a good candidate; the second reason is that, if it weren’t clear enough, I personally am a huge fan of sonnets, both in terms of how they sound and in terms of how they force a poet to organize, complexify, and concentrate their thought, and at this point I’m so attuned to what I like that I can pluck them up without even noticing. The third reason is, and I’m getting on my soapbox here, that I think that sonnets do tend to be, on average, better poems than most, both because they are the ideal length for a concentrated yet completely explored thought, and because of their aforementioned parameters of organization and dialectical complexification. Finally, the fourth reason is that sonnets are simply the most common received form, and so the chances of choosing a sonnet when selecting a poem in meter and rhyme, especially a modern one, are quite high. 

Far from making the show monotonous, I personally feel, and I hope you do as well, that the dominance of sonnets on Versecraft accomplishes at least three unique things: firstly, it highlights just how versatile sonnets can be, in terms of form, style, and content; secondly, it provides a kind of scientific control for the study of individual poets– the juxtaposition of how different poets approach the same form throws into higher relief the stylistic and thematic idiosyncrasies of these poets than otherwise. Finally, it makes episodes that tackle forms other than the sonnet stand out more for their formal qualities than they otherwise would, and enables this podcast to not simply consist of a blurry menagerie or cavalcade of different poetic forms, but to be a conscientious study of what forms best express which thoughts, and why certain forms tend to crop up more than others. 

But let’s return to Stallings. If we scan the meter, which unquestionably establishes a strong norm of iambic pentameter, we nevertheless find an abundance of anapestic substitutions, among other oddities. The prevalence of anapestic substitutions in particular indicates that Stallings is writing in what Robert Frost called “loose iambic,” which is to say iambic pentameter with extra unaccented syllables occasionally scattered in between the upward motions of the accents, creating a galloping anapestic effect. In at least two cases the use of an anapestic substitution creates a satisfying bit of word painting: in line two, in the phrase “the current slipping away” the anapest on the syllables “ping a way” creates a sonic slippage to mirror the physical slippage in the poem. In the final line, in the phrase “the invisible line pulled taut,” we begin with two skipping anapests which are then “pulled taut” by the heavy iamb “pulled taut.” This word painting is made especially witty by the fact that it creates a pun: not only is the fishing line pulled taut, but the iambic line is as well. 

As I said however, there are other oddities as well. The discrepancy in this poem between natural speech stress– that is to say, the way we might normally be inclined to place cadence in a sentence– and the accentual scheme of the meter can make certain lines tricky to scan. Take the first line for example, which is technically a perfect line of feminine iambic penatameter: The TWO of THEM stood IN the MIDdle WAter. However, because this is the first line, we don’t necessarily know we’re in iambic pentameter yet, and we might be tempted to read this line as: The TWO of them STOOD in the MIDle WAter. If we scanned the line according to these stresses, we would end up with an iamb, two anapests, and an amphibrach– this is neither iambic nor pentameter. On a first pass then, we might have a split second of thinking this is going to be a free verse poem, and this would immediately prove disorienting.  It’s only after we read the following lines, and get the rhythm in our head, that we can go back and read the line correctly. 

In line two, though it’s clear that we begin with two iambs and an anapest, we might be puzzled about how to scan the last two feet, “quick and cold.” Analyzed in isolation, this would be a cretic, and we could just label this a cretic substitution and call it a day. If possible however, if we’re in iambic pentameter I think it’s best if we can find a way to preserve the five foot pattern, and describe the iambic motion that we hear. Luckily, we can: if we treat the caesura created by the comma after “away” as a silent syllable, like a musical rest, we can read these feet as two regular iambs. With a little bit of musical thinking, the problem is solved. 

Sometimes it’s not so easy. Take line four, the most metrically unorthodox line in the poem. “Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.” Even if we can work out that this goes trochee, iamb, iamb, anapest, we are left with a four syllable final foot which we are unable to resolve: “ther and daughter.” The best we can do is reach into our bag of obscure feet and call this a tertius paeon, a four syllable foot with the accent on the third beat. 

As a final example of oddity, let’s look at line five: “Maybe he regretted he had brought her.” Sonically, this line is perfectly trochaic. But is that how we should interpret it in the context of an iambic poem? The immediate impulse is to call this a line of acephalous iambic pentameter, that is, a line of iambic pentameter with the first unaccented syllable omitted. The problem with this is that we end on an unaccented syllable– we now have a line of acephalous feminine iambic pentameter, a line of pentameter where we have cut off the head and added a tail. Which should we prefer: this frankensteined iambic pentameter or the pure trochaic pentameter which the line initially appears to be? I myself am torn about whether to follow the meter or the music here. Ultimately however, what we end up with is a trochaic motion in this line counterpointed by a perfectly iambic motion in the next line, creating an appropriate call-and-response relationship between the two. 

Now let’s begin the poem again, starting with the first quatrain:

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

This first quatrain very efficiently sets a scene: we already have a who– a father and a daughter, whom we infer are Stallings and her own father. We have a what, fishing, we have a when, some long ago summer of youth, and we have a where, a stream. Other than the plain-spoken clarity and serene objectivity of the speaker, there are two things that stand out most to me about this passage. The first is the predominance of the imagery of middleness. Most obviously, we are told in the first line that the father and daughter stood in the “middle water,” that is, in the depth of water between the shallows and the deep– they have thus fully exited their terrene habitat, their normal lives, and have encroached upon the habitat of the fish, but they still remain amphibiously aloof, and have not fully embraced the aquatic domain of their quarry. As we will see later on, this balance, this liminality, will come to have significant allegorical ramifications. 

Already there are other instances of middleness as well. The father and daughter are caught between the current at their feet, “quick and cold,” and the sun at their backs, which is “slow” and “sweating gold.” Our characters thus find themselves in between extremes of both temperature and motion, to say nothing of the optical contrast between the light of the sun and the presumed darkness of the water, and we may include here the shadows which are described later on in the poem. To go back to motion, we may note that both the quickness of the river and the slow procession of the sun are caused by gravity, but gravity operating on two entirely different scales, the earthly and the celestial. This further contrast adds a subtle weaving together of the mundane and the cosmic typical of Stallings’ work. Furthermore, the sun itself is in its zenith, its highest point, meaning that it’s exactly in the middle of the sky. Even in this seemingly ordinary description then, we discover a complex network of complementary tensions which endow this childhood moment with a sense of suspenseful poise and significance.

The other element here to which I’d like to draw your attention is the use of a rare and unusual literary device, all the more unusual here because it’s repeated twice in a row. This device is known as hypallage, or, more colloquially, as a transferred epithet. This occurs when a modifier is syntactically attached to a different word than the one it semantically modifies. In this quatrain, we see it most purely in the phrase “sullen summer.” Stallings of course isn’t actually claiming that the summer itself has feelings, but that the father and daughter felt sullen that summer, at least in that moment– syntactically, the adjective “sullen” appears to modify summer, but semantically, it actually modifies “father and daughter.” 

The other use of hypallage is not as technically pure, and indeed, you might more accurately call it personification or even the pathetic fallacy, a close cousin of hypallage. The phrase however functions exactly like hypallage, and given its proximity to the instance of true hypallage, it is sensible to consider them together as a single strategy. We find this when Stallings says that the sun was “sweating gold.” Obviously the sun doesn’t actually sweat, and even as a figurative statement it doesn’t seem to accurately describe the emanation of the sun’s rays. Stallings however is not actually trying to describe the sun’s luster, but to indirectly convey the heat and sweatiness experienced by the father and daughter as a result of the sun’s rays. By confusing the descriptions of natural elements with descriptions of the characters, Stallings creates an almost dream-like sense of organic unity, an effect which is particularly suited to the recollection of a hazy memory as well as to the semantic bleeding between literal and figurative that we will encounter later in the sestet. 

We should also note that hypallage was a literary device beloved of the Greeks and Romans, and that A.E. Stallings, just like her Classicist poet predecessor A.E. Housman, likely incorporated this strategy in her own work based on her intimacy with Classical poetry. Here we see the first of at least two subtle indications of Hellenic thinking in this poem, evidence that even when Stallings is not consciously employing Classical allusions in her work, she cannot help but draw upon her Classicist background.

Speaking of which, before moving on, there’s one other nifty detail worth pointing out, one that I think could either be intentional or unintentional. To go back to the word “sullen,” we may recall that the etymological root of this word is the Germanic word “sol” which means solitary, as in the phrase “sole survivor,” or in the word “solitary.” In Latin however, the word “sol” means sun. Hence, we might have an etymological, trans-linguistic pun on our hands here– the summer is sullen, but it is also swollen with sun, and it may even be that it’s the excessive sunniness that causes the sullenness. 

Let’s begin the poem again, and this time read through the second quatrain, thereby completing the octet: 

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

This second quatrain isn’t nearly as semantically dense as the first, but it does serve a couple of important functions. The first is to deepen our understanding of the relationship between father and daughter: We’ve already learned that both are feeling sullen, and here we learn furthermore that they’re uneasy around each other. Perhaps this fishing trip is either a desperate attempt for the father to connect with his daughter, or else he’s brought her along to his own hobby merely to satisfy his own sense of paternal duty. The daughter, for her part, would rather be elsewhere, and feels that she’s now too old to be doing this kind of thing with her Dad. This sentiment would seem to situate the daughter’s age around early adolescence, and here we have yet another liminal space to consider– that between childhood and adulthood. 

The second function of this passage is to set us up for the volta of the succeeding sestet, where we get to the real meat of the poem. With the line, “still, she remembered lessons he had taught her” the poem reveals that the entire octet, every line that preceded this one, was merely a contextual framing device to get to the next six lines. If we then look at the sestet, we see that it could pretty much function as a poem on its own. However, the framing device of the octet has accomplished three things which make this a greater poem than if it consisted merely of the sestet alone: firstly, it has provided pacing, giving us time to warm up to the idea of receiving a moral vision; secondly, it has provided us with a setting and characters that make the scenario in which this vision is relayed to us more vivid and therefore more persuasive. Finally, and most importantly, the context of the father and daughter’s relationship in the second quatrain and the suggestive contrasts in the first quatrain create a lens by which we can view the ensuing moral instruction not only as a didactic exhortation, but as a narrative development, and this too adds to our interest, and distracts us from noticing that we are the ones who are in fact being instructed. 

Without further ado then, let’s begin the poem once more, and this time read all the way through: 

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails

And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.

And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales

Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,

Life and death weighed in the shining scales,

The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.

If you listened to my Hopkins episode, you might recall my discussion of the traditional four-fold method of biblical interpretation: according to this method, we can interpret a text literally, typologically, in which we look for how certain events reference or foreshadow other events, tropologically, in which we look for the moral content or value of a text, and anagogically, in which we look for what that text has to say about the nature of reality. Here, we can interpret this concluding sestet literally, but it also begs to be interpreted on the tropological and anagogical levels: generalized phrases loaded with suggestively figurative vocabulary like “to cast toward shadows where the sunlight fails” and “when the unseen strikes” and “the bright-dark struggle” clue us in that this supposed fishing advice transcends its practical piscine trappings. 

We begin with the girl’s father teaching her “to cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails/and fishes shelter in the undergrowth.” On the obvious, literal level, the father is suggesting that the daughter cast her fishing line toward the cool, shadowy spots in the river where fishes congregate. On a moral level, we could read this to mean that one should intellectually pursue areas of thought beyond one’s understanding, or else areas of fear and suffering, and that therein lies the spiritual nutriment for which one seeks. 

The speaker goes on: “and when the unseen strikes, how all else pales beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth.” On a literal level, we are of course talking about how an unseen fish will, out of nowhere, snatch at the line, and that there is nothing that thrills quite like watching a fish struggle for its life, flopping from the darkness of the water into the light, its scales glistening with rainbow iridescence. Even on this literal level, the struggle is also figuratively “bright-dark:” it’s an exciting, “bright” moment for the girl and her father, a horrific, “dark” one for the fish. The word “pales” is also both figurative and literal: figuratively, it means all else appears insignificant beside it; literally, it refers to how, contrasted with the brilliant rainbow of the fish, the intensity of the sunlight, and the darkness of the water, all else appears to lack color, to be pale. 

We can also however read these lines on a cosmic, anagogical level: “when the unseen strikes”—that is, when what is unanticipated strikes, or, even more deeply, when the unseen divinity behind all things strikes at us— every other matter in our life appears trivial by comparison. In such circumstances, human beings wrestle with the bright-dark struggle between order and chaos, a struggle which is bright insofar as it gives meaning to our lives, dark insofar as it can ruin our lives. 

The phrase “rainbow wroth” is particularly interesting when considered anagogically— the struggle with an unseen force, the aquatic setting, and the biblical valence of the archaic word “wroth” bring to mind the biblical story of the Flood, wherein God exterminates nearly all life, and then shows the survivors a rainbow in order to show that his wrath has abated. Viewed in this context, the phrase “rainbow wroth” has the same oxymoronic yet holistically true quality of the phrase “bright-dark struggle.” Life, God, and fishing are all both fun and deadly, beautiful and horrific, merciful and cruel. The connection between fish and rainbows also has a literary pedigree. I would be surprised if, when writing this passage, Stalling did not have this passage in mind from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “The Fish:” 

“…oil had spread a rainbow

around the rusted engine

to the bailer rusted orange,

the sun-cracked thwarts,

the oarlocks on their strings,

the gunnels—until everything

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

And I let the fish go.” 

Or perhaps this concluding passage from Robert Lowell’s “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” which concerns whale-hunting and very much embraces the biblical overtones: 

“When the Lord God formed man from the sea’s slime

and breathed into his face the breath of life,

and blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill.

The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.”

In the penultimate line, Stallings sums up the reconciliation of opposites she’s been sketching with one of her most brilliant puns: “life and death weighed in the shining scales.” This is obviously a reference both to fish scales and the measuring scales associated with justice. What makes the pun work though is just how apt it is: the question of the fish’s life and death is  a moral weight on the fishers, and is also being weighed in the sense of being assessed: will the fishers kill the fish, or let it go free? The physical weight of the fish on the line, the way the sight of its scales prompts the question, brings a literal element into the mix. Furthermore, we might go so far as to say that in such a situation, especially in the eyes of an impressionable young person, the universe itself is being put on trial: what kind of world is this where a creature hunts another creature for sport, and does so partly in order to bond with another creature he’s brought along with him? This is the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth. 

In the last line, “the invisible line pulled taut that links them both,” Stallings breathtakingly delivers on her commitment to statements simultaneously physical and metaphysical. The invisible line linking life and death is the diaphanous fishing line between the fish and the fisher, but it is also the underlying metaphysical principle which reconciles all opposites: life and death, bright and dark, rainbows and wrath, youth and adulthood, water and land. Through the morally troubling yet beautiful process of fishing, the father and daughter come to appreciate more fully the complex, paradoxical, conciliatory nature of reality. 

But that isn’t all. The word “line” is yet another pun, as it is the lines of the poem, the lines of Stallings herself, which link the concepts of life and death together in the mind of the reader, just as it is not only the fishing line but the poetic line which is pulled taut by the metrical substitutions I discussed earlier. Stallings thus implicitly makes the claim that it is not only God, not only the fishing line, but the artist who is able to instigate a reconciliation of opposites and express a holistic vision of truth. 

Finally, in this last line we also see Stallings’ mythological mind at work. In Greek mythology, life spans were conceptualized as threads that were spun, measured and cut by the Moirai, the Fates. To embrace one’s moira was to accept one’s fate, recognizing that the quality and length of one’s thread of life was out of one’s hands— it had already been spun and measured, and could be cut at any time. The casual killing of a fish, in Stallings’ hands, not only has the potential to induce spiritual revelation, but it also can serve as a memento mori: in witnessing the death of the fish, we recognize that we too can always be casually killed at any time by a will and intelligence more powerful than our own. Eventually, all of us will be— but until then, it is better that the scales fall from our eyes. 

            With all that we’ve learned and explored, let’s read through this poem one last time, as an old friend: 

Fishing

The two of them stood in the middle water,

The current slipping away, quick and cold,

The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,

Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.

Maybe he regretted he had brought her—

She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—

Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.

Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:

To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails

And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.

And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales

Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,

Life and death weighed in the shining scales,

The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.