Wait

by Alison Stine

In a small town under a spell, a child bride prays for the sheriff’s gun. Iron under a bed stops a nightmare. The carousel artist can carve only birds. Part fairy tale and part gothic ballad, Wait spans a single the year before a young woman’s marriage. Someone is always watching—from the warehouse, from the woods. And on the outskirts of town, someone new is waiting.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2011

About the author

Alison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, she has published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Sandy Longhorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wait is all about love and lust, regrets and longing, sex and joy, too. While there is not a clear narrative arc for the book, there is a consistent speaker revealing the age-old journey from innocence to experience. Formally, I find the book interesting because Stine moves easily between the single stanza, left aligned block of text and the more airy, multi-stanza, multi-indented lines of text. Being more drawn to the latter in my own work, I read the former with extra attention to see how Stine made them work.

Luminescence, each of the poems in this book glows with intense images and powerful feeling that never crosses into sentimentality. It was almost as if each poem was pulsing with energy and I found myself tearing through the book on my first read. However, I'm having a hard time summarizing what made me feel that urge to turn the pages so quickly, given there was no mystery or plot pulling me toward the end.

Here is an excerpt from one of the first poems in the book, "Child Bride."

It's different every night. Your sister
has two days before her wedding,
but she has been sewing since she was five.
Your cousin is nineteen, but her groom
is sixty. You risk salvation by squeezing
your eyes. Now your prophet is wheat
in a rain field. Now your prophet is acid
and orange. Love ends in the pocket, a rope
belt untying.

This poem has one of the most haunting last lines ever, but I'll let you discover it on your own, Dear Readers.

"Salt" has the same intensity but with the added white space I mentioned earlier. Here is the beginning.

You were the lover for which I bled. Comfort me
.....with salt: tears, their silken twin. Understand

..........I have made my arms doors for you. Listen:

I love that "listen" followed by the colon that keeps us breathless and urgent at the end of the line.

One of the most heart-breaking poems in the book has the speaker detailing a miscarriage. Again, what stands out here is not only the powerful language but the ability to avoid the overly dramatic sentimentality that the subject matter could easily cause. Here is an excerpt from "The Red Thread," and for clarity, the speaker is in the shower.

A red snake coils at the bottom of the drain: our child,

......phrased like a question. The plum tree in back
...........ruptured in blight. Still, I could say nothing.

My favorite poem of the whole collection may just be the very first poem, "Wife." In it, the speaker recounts a childhood filled with the urge to rush into adulthood, into sex really. She states, "I got in a car / for a strawberry cream" and later "I wanted / to be dancing." By the way, that line break on "wanted" is brilliant as it sums up that restless urge of the teen years. However, the speaker then admits her regret for rushing into it all as she addresses her husband and wishes she had waited. She states:

.............................I would have curled

...........in a rabbit whorl, a mouse nest,

in a leaf-spilled shade. I am a bird
.......in the field and I want you to find me.

............I want you to find me. Tell me wait.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stine has been called a Midwestern Gothic poet, and after reading Wait, it's easy to see why. Stine intermingles bleak elements and dark elements of small town, rural life with the more "creepy" (for lack of a better word) elements of nature. There are stark poems of sexuality, such as a girl in "The Bicycle" who practices "kissing on the ash/with its patch bare of bark/like a belly" or the speaker in "Gossip" who proclaims, "Oh, it was good. I was good. You're so good/he said. A purple miniskirt and a black/satin sting. I smelled like cotton. I smoked cigarettes with my legs."

There are poems that warn of danger, such as my favorite, "Canary" where the speaker explains, "My Canary shutters against the man I thought/I knew, the one who promised to love me." (Most of you know this, but I should point out that canaries were used to detect dangerous gases in coal mines -- perhaps this bit of workingclass history is what drew me into this poem).

There's even love found in the beautiful ruins. In the opening poem, "Wait" the poet asks "Make me//a blackbird. I want to be a blackbird/But I was not. I was hidden in beige//I was hard corn left for the animals//We were hiding from men, our father and uncles who would throw us//in air, leave us in the trees, mistake//for laughter our screams." She ends with a plea: "I want you to find me. Tell me wait."

I loved Stine's first book, Ohio Violence, and this followup has turned out to be the best book I have read this year.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stine, in an interview in Hayden’s Ferry Review, says:
How can a woman be herself, hold onto herself, and give of herself as well? (http://haydensferryreview.blogspot.co...) She gives us Wait, with its “poems about love, marriage, and hell, basically” as an answer. These poems continue the Midwestern and gothic influences found in her first collection, Ohio Violence, but Wait stands on its own, and in many respects is quite different.

Stine alternates between 2 forms, that of a single stanza poem, and poems where single lines alternate with a couplet. The white space in the latter form increases the tension of waiting. The poems span the year before a woman’s marriage, with themes of what exactly it means to wait. Wait for a lover, for a husband and children, or wait for wisdom and control. There are intimations of watching as well.

The first poem, which is prior to the sections, perhaps sums up the entire book. “Wife” ends with these lines:
I am a bird
In the field and I want you to find me.

I want you to find me. Tell me wait.

The early poems indicate a woman searching for a protector.
I loved a married man, and in the months

after, it was easy to say I wanted trust. I wanted

wisdom. I wanted a father.
(Tennessee)

In the second section, the narrator begins to mature, has relationships, gains self-awareness.
I practiced kissing on the ash
with its patch bare of bark
like a belly,
(The Bicycle)

Stine asks a question in many of the poems; the question, often at the end, frequently brings the poem back to its beginning.
That time, after a fall, he held my hand

to count each bone? That is what I live for,
(Reelection)

Didn’t I deserve that, one
lobed fruit, to split, to swallow, myself?
(Impetus)

In the final section, the narrator is propelled toward the man she will marry.
How could I not imagine a difference?
For one, there was no pain. For another,
no fear.
(White Asparagus)

In the closing poem, “Hadrian’s Wall,” the narrator tells of constructing a home, whether physical or psychic. Historians say that Hadrian’s wall was built as a defense, as a way of controlling the physical environment.
This wall that we

will never see- I will wait for you.
I will wait for you there.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, incredibly musical. Almost every poem in this book is worth at least 2 reads.

[Carolyn]

"Half fairytale, half gothic" = poems from the year in the life of a young woman before her marriage