Doug Roy, Turtles, Cut Paper
Because a Woodchuck Looks like a Rock
Only at certain times of day
and only when viewed
at a certain angle
and only in a certain frame of mind
do I see the rock
that looks like a woodchuck
and sometimes the cloud
that summons an elephant
a crack in the ceiling
can look like a spider
a hair on the mirror
mimic a crack
a box can be empty
a door can be locked
the next step can be tricky
because when alarmed
a woodchuck can look like a rock.
____________
Philip Kirsch
Review by Bruce Parker
Well done, tight, reflection on nature and chance.
Review by Manny Blacksher
Phil Kirsch’s witty “Because a Woodchuck Looks like a Rock” is a poem about the rhetorical figure metonymy, the ability of something to ‘stand’ for something else associatively because the first thing reminds us of the second. Metonymy’s more inclusive than synecdoche, when a part stands for a whole. The White House is a metonym for the executive branch of U.S. government but not because the now partly demolished building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. SW participates in government. The White House isn’t even like the president, his cabinet, and other nominated federal officials. One thing reminds us of the others. In a figurative way, we accept the White House as a substitute term for an enormous division of government.
The poem has two mirroring stanzas that have nearly identical numbers of lines and similar line lengths. The first stanza is syntactically a complete sentence broken by enjambments. The second stanza contains multiple statements that parse as sentences and sentence fragments.
The first stanza presents a cautious claim about the conditions required for a specific rock to resemble a woodchuck to the speaking persona: “only at certain times of day,” only “when viewed at a certain angle,” and “only in a certain frame of mind.” The ‘conditions’ for seeing the rock as a woodchuck are definite: the way things look in daylight at different times, the way things seen at different angles suggest shapes, how a different “frame of mind” stimulates imagination or induces the mind to look for similarities between one thing and another. The stanza ends with the persona acknowledging another ‘similar’ associated appearance: with daylight a ‘certain’ way, the eye appreciating from a ‘certain’ angle, the mind framing things a ‘certain way, an immense cloud “summons an elephant” as an image in the mind.
The conditions related in the first stanza all seem lucidly rational and acceptable explanations for why the persona or any of us readers might look at a rock and think it appears to be a woodchuck, just as we could look at a cloud and see it’s shaped like an elephant. But the conditions are specific in funny, generic ways. We see things that are exactly like a woodchuck or an elephant, but only in “certain” circumstances. “Certain” is repeated three times. It has a slippery double sense. The light, the angle of sight, the way of thinking and feeling are ‘sure’, indisputable, the persona contends, when the rock or a cloud looks like one or the other animal. But “certain” is also a generic word. We know the spectator beholds a woodchuck or sometimes an elephant. But the “certain” time of day, the angle, and the mindset are never descriptively identified. We readers provide the details. We know how it is to imagine that a thing that might resemble something else could be, with some perceptual gymnastics, ‘transformed’ into the ‘certain’ image of what we think we see.
It’s a bit of a trick or a challenge. We see how much something looks like something else in a peculiar way, and we take some pains to twist our gaze out of focus and open our sense of credulity so, for a few instants, we are astonished that the appearance is exactly that of what we imagine.
The second stanza swiftly lists a sequence of things that ‘are’ a particular way because they seem to be. And, indeed, we accept the appearances to be real and factual. First, the persona suggests a plausible resemblance: “a crack in the ceiling/ can look like a spider.” Eliding the hedging ‘can’ in the next proposition, the persona contends “a hair on the mirror/ mimic a crack.” Removing the conditional verb makes the statement seem more like a simple statement. But the associative resemblances are quickly becoming statements about ‘metaphorical’ facts. There’s a sudden shift to confusingly common-sensical statements about factual conditions related to ‘appearance’: “a box can be empty/ a door can be locked.” Aren’t those simply true, mundane truths? But all the cautious suggestions before about things seeming to be other things provokes us to question what should be certain. Does an empty box have nothing inside it? No dust or dirt? No air. Isn’t absence—“nothing”—still a thing? And locked doors? Do we lock a door’s wood, its steel, its fiberglass? No, actually, we always lock a door’s lock. We just use a part (the lock) to stand for a whole (a door with a lock). The factual statements have imbedded slippery language. We might be thinking of Magritte’s famous painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
The poem runs quickly forward. We might still be puzzling out what’s strange about locking a door, but the next line alerts us, “the next step can be tricky”—We could respond in all sorts of ways, but we’ve been warned that what follows “can be” some sort of “trick.” For the last “trick” in the sequence, the narrative persona concludes that “because [something’s] alarmed/ a woodchuck can look like a rock.” And, with a flourish, the narrator evinces that it is so.
“I told you in the title that a woodchuck could look like a rock. You all assented that it could be so, but I drew your attention to the ‘certain conditions’ required for this to be true, and you all agreed that those conditions might make a woodchuck seem like a rock—or even a cloud look like an elephant. But to elaborate on these mysteriously certain circumstances, I’ve invited you to see that a crack might look like a spider, while a hair on a mirror will look like a crack. I’ve asked you to verify that this box looks empty, and, to all appearances, this door is locked. But now—as is plain, I’ve nothing up my sleeves—I say to look closely and not be fooled but “when alarmed” (Alarm! Who’s alarmed?! Am I alarmed? The woodchuck? Can a rock be alarmed?) Presto! Behold! A woodchuck can look like a rock!”
The poem’s indisputably a rhetorical magic trick. We assent to commonsense statements about metonymic association, then get distracted by the legerdemain of some distracting and even puzzlingly new statements involving common associations. While still working out what’s not apparent about locked doors, we’re alerted that the “tricky” part’s coming, and, while we’re “alarmed” enough to assent that we’re unsettled, we’re presented with the undeniable declaration that we have the evidence before us.
As a performance, the poem’s an excellent trick. And, we may be sure that, by the end of the multi-trick act, the narrator will have proven that, “when alarmed,” a rock can look like a woodchuck.