"Alcestis as a Trial, an Ekstasis, a Whereas, or a Problem" by Jennifer A Sutherland from BIRMINGHAM POETRY REVIEW

Today's poem is by Jennifer A Sutherland

Alcestis as a Trial, an Ekstasis, a Whereas, or a Problem
After Anne Carson

WHEREAS, an advocate begins by defining terms;
WHEREAS, an advocate undertaking argument speaks carefully;
WHEREAS, neither of these propositions is completely accurate; in both cases, an advocate begins by choosing sides. The right speech, the person who is in the right, the situation fortune favors;
WHEREAS, this is not a simple proposition; everyone is sure no jury in the world etc. etc.;
WHEREAS, everyone asks the judge or jury for objective reassurance of their innocences, and the judge or jury might or might not answer in the anticipated way;
WHEREAS, the preceding sentence is beautiful; it is a gorgeous thing, pivoting as it does upon its variables, its ors;
WHEREAS, the word ors functions as the opposite of its homonym, since it arrests the movement of the rhetoric and leaves the idea stranded in the water, the waves lapping gently at the bow, waiting for the mist to clear;
WHEREAS, the sentence remains where it is as surely as if it was anchored to the ocean floor;
WHEREAS, for poems contemplating and assessing fault in several parties, there are any number of analogies to be found in literature or myth;
WHEREAS, Oresteia is an obvious choice, with its curses, murders, and its vengeful Furies. People kill and then are killed in retribution, one after the other, until finally Orestes pleads insanity and lives;
WHEREAS, the eponymous heroine of Antigone privileges one system's laws over another's and then she dies, and even if she only hangs herself a whole family hangs with her. And anyway the lady dies;
WHEREAS, Alcestis, the lady and the play, is intensely in-between, innocent or guilty, alive or dead;
WHEREAS, she will not bear direct examination. She covers her face and keeps to her secluded places;
WHEREAS, if you wish to visit with her she'll admit you but only through a side door, after you have traversed a trail that leads through a wood, your shoes soaked through with river water;
WHEREAS, in the middle of Alcestis lies a woman and her grieving children, even though the people watching from the bleachers expect a satyr, nymphs, a monster, and a wineskin;
WHEREAS, Heracles arrives, a machina, not a deus, and he returns the mother to her children;
WHEREAS, Alcestis holds her tongue;
WHEREAS, the gods have very little to do with any of it; and,
Looking deeply into the house, the rooms converge on one another, caress one another, birth and suckle and then destroy one another, which is Necessity. Necessity leaps upon the concave back of the gazelle, who yelps in terror, struggles and then succumbs.
Necessity eats until it is full. The air moves the grass like a curtain drawn open and then closed.

Copyright © 2025 Jennifer A Sutherland All rights reserved
from Birmingham Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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