Rising, Falling, Hovering
by C.D. Wright
The mood of Rising, Falling, Hovering is expressed through word choice, line breaks, formatting, and the broken narrative. I picked up on the emotions of the title poem fairly easily, though the narrative usually eluded me. I felt that Wright used words with dual connotations effectively to create a somewhat elusive and broken narrative. For example, in the lines “his half-delineated face / already in twilight the batting pouring / from the clouds below,” the word batting is used in a quilting metaphor for fluffy clouds. When used in a section about relationship trouble, however, and next to imagery about a face, the word takes on an abusive connotation linked to a bat or battery (14). Through the entire poem, I couldn’t find an explanation for the discord between the main female character and her romantic interest, so I was grasping for possible reasons, like money troubles or physical or verbal abuse (29). The most straightforward information I can find is in this monologue: “About the other night I know you are sorry I am sorry too We were tired Me / and my open-shut-case mouth You and your clockwork disciplines” (15). This indicates to me that the couple is feuding and that blame plays a role.
I experienced difficulty decoding the narrative and the identities of the speaker and the main characters in the title poem for a number of reasons, many of which are linked to the successful conveying of emotion. I am able to determine that there is a troubled relationship between and unnamed man and woman (somehow related to a boy fighting in Baghdad, perhaps their son) and they are traveling to Mexico, then reach Mexico and hear news of the bombings in Baghdad, then there seems to be some anti-war ponderings and sentiments, then I lose the narrative. In “Rising, Falling, Hovering, cont.,” more narrative about familial relationships emerges, though making the connections between people and circumstances is still a struggle for me. For the longest time, I was trying to connect the woman and the man and their son learning Spanish to the couple and the boy in the first title poem, but I couldn’t figure out why the relationship wouldn’t have been explicit in “Rising, Falling, Hovering.” Part of my trouble, I believe, stems from the formatting. As soon as I got adjusted to one format and the way information was released in it, the formatting changed. The couplets and the single lines were easy for me to understand, the lines mostly connected and the format being familiar. The almost randomly arranged lines, the maxims like “The writing in the trees remains illegible,” and the prose poem-like sections were more difficult for me to transition to because I was less familiar with the format and occasionally the imagery and narrative would be disjointed.
As a nonfiction student, I usually want either a stronger narrative or no narrative in a poem. With the broken narrative, I became distracted from the imagery and the emotional core of the work. I spent most of the time trying to make connections between the sections, the characters, and the places and felt that I somehow missed the bigger picture. I also became stuck on the Spanish (and German) used in the poem, knowing that I should not try to translate it—she often gave the equivalent in the same line or the one before—and focus more on the sound, rhythm, and texture.
