Travels to Tartarus: Tourist in Hell by Eleanor Wilner

View All◄ Page 3 of 3
BY Christina Cook

One would hope that a moral imperative against murder places human instinct above the law of natural selection which guides animal instinct, but the war within the human soul is muddy, as the above quote indicates — both in terms of being dirty (“not so clean & white”) and unsure (“not so [black] & white”). Later in the poem, we see a place where “the sun is forever at noon, no shadows / intrude.” In the absence of a higher power whose shadow attempts to delineate right from wrong, such as God’s or Jesus’ or the Boardroom’s, our souls are left to find a moral equilibrium on their own.

This is a difficult truth to unearth on a short trip to Hell. However, the closing poem in the collection leaves us with hope, though not certainty, that such equilibrium may be arrived at. In “Tracking,” the speaker postulates a place deep in the ocean where

…the giant Alba swims, ellipsis
of the deep, enormity, unseen, except on the sonar’s

screen, bright shadow of leviathan or a merlin trick, for
at such a depth, such crushing pressures — it could not
live — and yet. The transitive exists, swimming the fissures.

— p. 100

The poem continues through to these closing stanzas:

…while the great
Alba, scarcely a glimmer against the gloom,
swam on, its jaw wide, ingesting darkness like krill,
until it had swallowed all but its own glowing self,

and, tired of the conceit, shed its tons of matter,
rose in time to see first-light ignite the waves,
back in the blue delight of dawn, its ravishing until.

— p. 100

The shadow cast by this huge peaceful being is “bright,” and as the gorgeous course of language unfolds in these stanzas, we see its glow literally consume the darkness and the shadows we saw on our quite stunning tour of Hell. It certainly will give us something to think about while we unpack the charred remains of our luggage.

Page 3 of 3 ◄ 1 2 3 View All
 

Biography

ELEANOR WILNER has published six books of poetry, most recently The Girl with Bees in Her Hair (2004) and Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems (1997), both from Copper Canyon Press; Otherwise (The University of Chicago Press, 1993); and a translation of Euripides’ Medea (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). She teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and was a guest editor for Ploughshares in the spring of 2009. She is a lifelong advocate for civil rights and peace, and is a contributing editor of Cerise Press.

CHRISTINA COOK‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Dos Passos Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Harpur Palate, Packingtown Review, and The Bitter Oleander. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a contributing editor at Inertia. Also a contributing editor of Cerise Press, she teaches writing at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire.

Related

 

Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com

Permalink URL: https://www.cerisepress.com/03/07/tourist-in-hell-by-eleanor-wilner

Page 3 of 3 was printed. Select View All pagination to print all pages.