Response to "Whites"

I may be completely wrong. I may be really off track. This may make no sense at all, but when I read “Whites,” I came to a strong conclusion as to what the poem was about with no hard evidence whatsoever. Call me crazy, but I think the poem centers around a death. More specifically, I think it’s about the progression of time right before the death, the death itself, the funeral, and almost immediately afterwards.

Whether I’m right or wrong I don’t know, but I can certainly say the author does two very interesting things in this poem.

Number one: Entirely based on image, the poem forces us from one reflection to the next extremely quickly. It feels like watching a home video on fast-forward where someone forgot to plug in the audio cable. The way I take it; the author is directly challenging us to look into her mind and see exactly what she saw, nothing more nothing less. And at the same time, she demands we know what event these images are transcribing… exactly what they mean.

Secondly, and even more importantly, the author is filtering these images. And I’d say, she’s filtering them in a rather cut throat kind of way. She only lets us see shades of white. That’s it. So now the panoramic of her mind is on fast foreword 4X, maybe even 8. Luckily, the title hints at this suggestively enough for us readers to make the connection. Also, it’s only fair to point out how this (the evocative title) works well to help with the forcing and filtering. It’s like she’s saying, “you may think grandmother’s toes are more beige in color, but nope, they’re a shade of white!” I guess that’s why concrete-ness in poetry is such a big deal.
So given that, why do I/where do I get death from?

Well, there are words like scar, blind man, gluey soup, chalked concoctions, and ulcer in the beginning. These are words I think I associate with sickness, and hospital for some reason. Then there’s a banker who pokes at family ledgers, the sense of gossip, weeping, nurses, and grandmother’s pared feet. I think of this as confirmation of a death and preparing for a funeral, which usually results in sitting at a bank for hours, family, weeping, and a lot of “he said she said/have you heard yet?” kind of talk. Towards the end of the poem, there come terms like slow, the body, Savior, and alter wall. To me this means funeral, or some type of acknowledgment towards Christianity, which is often questioned at times of death. Lastly, we have Pierre the naked sailor in the tub upstairs who I would say simply and perfectly signifies a shower after a long day.

This poem, death oriented or not, is a great example of being concise and writing strictly, with little room for anything that doesn’t portrait the main idea. This technique and strategy was very successful and works well.

Yay.


-Rachel Alberico