A.E. Stallings, Archaic Smile

Reviewed by Michael Graber

Archaic Smile
by A. E. Stallings
The University of Evansville Press
1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville IN 47722
ISBN 0-930982-52-5

In a parallel universe where serious literature is widely read, many well-thumbed copies of this volume are being passed around in a fever. Hopeful Ph.D. candidates write dissertations about the young poet's use of classical allusions and daring feminine expressions of Greek legends, while the unschooled revel in the imaginative twist within the lyrics. Both the best educated and the rowdy public take delight in the haunting musicality, stunning imagery, metaphoric invention, catty sensibility, and open-eyed trudge into humanity darkest fears in A. E. Stallings' potent debut, Archaic Smile, winner of the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award.

Ironically, Stallings training as a Classicist has made her work more relevant for our era than most poets reared in the High Modernist or post WWII-workshop traditions. Many of the better poems in the book remind readers that our most pressing anxieties are not by-products of contemporary culture, but rather ancient human longing. Like a good tonic, the poems soothe timeless suffering with a homeopathic cure—by exploring the historical origins of the wounds and bearing new light on the shadowy side of our collective psyche. Although at times poignantly tender, Stallings mythic prowess reminds us that poetry is a public art, and not a solipsistic nightmare. The work is not of the monotone diary-entry type, but well staged and superbly crafted monologues and lyrics, more ceremonial than so much of the crestfallen whines commonly disguised as poetry.

Section one of Archaic Smile begins the collection with a descent into the underworld. The opening poem, "A Postcard from Greece," finds the momentum in high gear, or, traditionally speaking, in media res. A sonnet of sorts, the piece serves as the perfect entry into the major themes of the book: disorientation enlivens the senses; characters undergo a near-death experience that radically transforms their relationship to mortality; something innocent (in this case a vocational transplant) becomes an invitation into the uncertain mystery of existence, which shatters the naïveté and exposes the inherent epistemological depth in sublime stings of terse imagery and sonic luxury. The first four lines report a loss of control with the intensity that sensuously recreates the event:

Hatched from sleep, as we slipped out of orbit
Round a clothespin curve new-watered with the rain,
I saw the sea, the sky, as bright as pain,
That outer space through which we were to plummet.

Although the driving couple escaped death by crashing into an olive tree "on the cliff's brow," we are reminded of "those who lost their wild race with the road/And sliced the tedious sea once, like a knife." Reborn to a fragile world after internalizing dying in the sea, the couple "cling together, shade to pagan shade, /Surprised by sunlight, air, this afterlife." Suddenly, the themes, cast in such nimble phrases, jar readers beyond what Aristotle defined as the signs of great drama, "pity and terror," and into intimate empathy.

The poem is followed by two dramatic monologues, which not only introduce but also explore the relationship between the King and Queen of the Underworld. Some details are so sensory they generate devastating reading. Stallings could easily knock Disney off Broadway if she ever considers writing for theater. For example, the speaker of "Hades Welcomes His Bride" speaks with an unexpected gentleness: "... No Smile?/ Well, some solemnity befits a queen." Hades tone is natural and filled with authority; readers won't doubt the credibility of unnatural occurrences. When explaining the maids, he explains "And do not fear from them such gossiping/ As servants usually are wont. They have/ not mouth nor eyes and cannot thus speak ill/ of you." Likewise, in the poem's sister piece, "Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother," the aside is filled with acute nuances of expression. Here are the first six lines of the poem:

First-hell is not so far underground—
My hair gets tangled in the roots of trees
& I can just make out the crunch of footsteps,
The pop of acorns falling, or the chime
Of a shovel squaring a fresh grave or turning
Up the tulip bulbs for separation.

As with all her poems, a few startling turns add gravity to the writing. In the last stanza, Persephone admits that her letters never get sent, but are discovered by her husband. Set up to fear Hades wrath, we get surprising response:

He took my hands in his hands, my shredded fingers
Which I have sliced for ink, thin paper cuts.
My effort is futile, he says, and doesn't forbid it.

Unit II seems the most scattered yet possesses some worthwhile reading. Unit III, "Tour of the Labyrinth," however, resonates with rare power. Most of the poems in this section give voice to many of Greece's underexpressed female characters of mythology—Daphne, Arachne, Tithonus, Odysseus' wife, Medea, and more. Centuries of welled up emotion uncork and take to outraged song in Stallings' hands. Finally, these characters, dimensions of culture, have recovered enough to decry their own experiences on the epic stage. The labyrinth we tour in this section is nothing less than the archetypal feminine. While it took a cunning female to lead the classical hero out of the maze, it takes a talented female poet to move the labyrinth to the ground floor. An example from "Medea, Homesick" suffices to display that this cast is forcibly dispossessed and able to charm with vehemence:

Who many gifted witches, young and fair,
Have flunked, been ordinary, left the back—
Stooping study of their art, black
Or white, for love, that sudden foreigner?

The last section, "For the Losers of Things," presents some differently styled tropes, other sides, of the poet. Two poems in particular, "Fishing" and "The Man Who Wouldn't Plant Willow Trees," shine with a certainty of greatness, humbly imploring the next editions of anthologies for inclusion.

Even the little lyrics in this collection, which seem insignificant upon reading, grow in the memory like the image and song of a ghost. Perhaps some of the success here is due to the sheer delight Stallings takes in employing traditional forms. In a recent essay she refers to the "playful, silk-ribbon bondage of the sonnet," which hardly sounds like a complaint or forced restraint. Defining herself as a "retro-formalist," she represents a break from the recent Neo Formal camp, calling the group "absurd," adding that "there is nothing new about form, nor has it ever ceased from being written, making a break between old and new."

The poet's initials (A.E.) nod to Housman, another Classicist/Poet. The two poets share many similarities and there is a clear poetic linage here at play. Most noticeably, for the sake of this review, both Housman and Stallings debut with masterpieces. Archaic Smile deserves the wide readership of a best-selling novel.

Michael Graber