Behind-the-Scenes Look

A poem from the podcast

Hi, Friend.

My last post was about what’s bringing me joy—the good stuff—and I realized that I should have included being the host of The Slowdown. It’s been a joy and a privilege to share a poem and a moment of reflection with you each weekday! The process begins with a treasure hunt—finding poems to share—and continues with writing the scripts that introduce the poems. I love engaging with the poems in this way, priming the listener for the poem to come.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to our newsletter, you can do so here, and the poems will come right to your inbox, along with an abridged version of my introduction. If you could use more poetry first thing, before the world has a chance to get at you—because who doesn’t need that?—I hope you’ll subscribe.

As I mentioned in my previous post about Richie Hofmann’s poem “Lamb,” I come to these texts as a reader, a fellow poet, and a teacher. Sometimes I wish I could stick around a bit at the end of an episode and talk about what drew me to the poem, or point out what I specifically admire about it. And then I realized I can do that here!

Today I’m sharing some thoughts on a poem I admire a great deal, “A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem” by Rachel Dillon.

A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem

but in this poem nothing dies.

Alone in the poem, I make myself
brave. No—I show brave
to my body, take both to the ocean.

Come hurricane, come rip current,
come toxic algal bloom.

In March, I drift past the estuary
to watch an eight-foot dolphin
lap the Mill River

like a cat pacing a bathtub,
sick and disoriented.

Biologists will unspool her empty intestines,
weigh her gray cerebellum.
She swam a great distance to die

alone. I’m sorry—I lied. I can’t control
what lives or dies. I need a place

to stow my brain. To hold
each moment close as a sand flea
caught in my knuckle hairs.

Please, someone—
tell me a poem can coax

oil from a sea bird’s throat.
Tell me what to do
with my hands—my hands—

what can my hands do now?

As I say in the introduction, I think about this quote from Fred Rogers, of the famous PBS show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, so often: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

“Look for the helpers” is a phrase I think about a lot. We also need to be the helpers. We all want to do good with the skills, talents, and resources we have. So to ask, “What can a poem do to help?” is to gesture toward a bigger question: “What can art do?” What can literature, or music, or film, or performance, visual art do for us, particularly when we are struggling?

I think art can articulate the beauty and horrors of being alive. I think it can make people feel seen and understood, and therefore less alone. I think it can bear witness to what our planet is enduring. This poem does all of that, and it does it with style.

When I first read “A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem,” I was struck by the poet’s use of line and stanza. The title is a run-in, part of the opening sentence. The stanzas alternate between couplets (two-line stanzas) and tercets (three-line stanzas). On one hand, visually the title and first line together form a kind of couplet because of the run-in. On the other hand, title aside, the poem is bookended by single lines.

I also immediately admired the line breaks, and the interplay between enjambed and end-stopped lines. The second stanza is a great example of the power of enjambment to create suspense and surprise the reader.

Alone in the poem, I make myself
brave. No—I show brave
to my body, take both to the ocean.

“Alone in the poem, I make myself” has its own logic, as the speaker is creating her persona—making the self—while making meaning. But then the meaning shifts when we get to the next line. She’s making herself brave. The period there after only one syllable is jarring, so the word brave is emphasized. It’s further emphasized by being repeated in the line.

The transition from stanza six into stanza seven (I’m glad you’re not middle school boys, so I can say those numbers without hearing SIX SEVEN! in response) mirrors some of the moves of that second stanza. “She swam a great distance to die” makes sense on its own, but the image becomes more painful when we get to the next line. Again the period after alone emphasizes the word. And again, as in stanza two, there’s a reconsidering that happens here: “I’m sorry—I lied” reminds me of the “No—” in stanza two, down to the em dash.

She swam a great distance to die

alone. I’m sorry—I lied. I can’t control
what lives or dies. I need a place

Overall, the amount of white space, the amount of enjambment, and the short lines slow the poem down. We’re getting plenty of time to parse the syntax and savor each line. The poem either begins with a single line or as a couplet that includes the title, depending on how you look at it, but the last line is certainly on its own. It’s emphasized because it’s all by itself, cushioned in white space. The question is also emphasized by the repetition of “my hands”:

Tell me what to do
with my hands—my hands—

what can my hands do now?

The speaker is pleading. There’s a sense of desperation and a deep desire to be useful. To be a helper. The repetition three times here also mirrors an earlier repetition: the anaphora in stanza three. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses, lines, sentences. In this stanza, “come” is repeated three times:

Come hurricane, come rip current,
come toxic algal bloom.

This poem is full of surprises, reconsiderations, and switchbacks. Form and content are working in tandem. The speaker of “A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem” wonders aloud about what it can do to be a helper. And, I’d argue, in its articulation, and in its witnessing, it is a helper. I hope if you enjoyed this poem, you’ll seek out more work by Rachel Dillon.

Thanks for reading, and for listening to The Slowdown, and for being here.

Happy listening, & reading, & writing—
Maggie