One Hell of a Vantage

This poem is beyond any close definition of our common, consensual reality. The setting is a tent on a small rise overlooking a stream. There is also a town that it mentions lies down the road. The town is empty and cypher-like, everything seems stagnant and still. The one place we see motion is in the stream that goes by. This setting cannot be real.

The only other place that there is any movement is here:

the tent flaps stir, and something like a burr
sticks to the heart, and nothing can shake it off.

Even this motion is surreal. The burr is stuck to a heart that "shakes"? Not likely, Why does she take all motion out of this poem and then insert it into the two instances where it shows? Well, here is my humble guess.....

The poem is not set in OUR world. It is set in a very empty version of the hereafter. The town has no movement, even the words she uses to describe it are empty of life and meaning. Even she says how it's not quite real:

...It's a bit too green, quick water
in this drowsy channel slows,...

Then the people see themselves float by in the final stanza. This does not add to any argument on the grounds that this place is reality. They are seeing part of themselves head to a different place, possibly another part of the afterife.

Unfortunately, we can't know. The main problem with this poem is that it is one of Wilner's few that does not draw on outside aid. This possibly makes the poem the weakest of all of the book. The poems that have outside texts as part of their material can be easily seen. On the whole writing with allusions may cause a weakness, in Wilner's writing style the allusions make up the poetry. The poem is hard to read because her style is so mixed up with drawing in other things that when she does not it causes her writing to fall flat.

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