Surprised, taken aback, stopped in your tracks, disrupted. A sudden demand to see something differently. A bridge between bewilderment and wonder. A jolt.
The verb to startle is “to cause (a person or animal) to undergo a sudden involuntary movement of the body, through surprise, alarm, etc.; to surprise greatly.” As Robert Frost famously says, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” Part of the poetic impulse is to startle. The OED also notes that as an intransitive verb, “startle” once was “chiefly used of cows rushing wildly about a field in the grip of some irritation (stinging insects, burning sun, etc.).”
The startling image: the out-of-nowhere simile or description that puzzles the reader and enlarges the poem; that connects the world of the poem to the world we physically inhabit; that at once vividly illustrates a scene or a moment and challenges us to see it in a new way.
How many times have you heard a poet or reader of poetry talk about the pleasure in coming across a new way of seeing the world? In language that immerses you in an experience, that offers access to someone else’s distinct perception, that challenges your expectations? To put such an image on a page and offer it to the world—to startle and to be ourselves startled—well, that’s the very heart of why we write.
The Prose Poem & the Startling Image/ Amorak Huey
See this thread about surprise in poetry
Emily Dickinson and the startled grass
[from a log entry dated 1 april 2022] I just looked up “startle” in ED’s lexicon. Here are the two definitions offered:
- Shake or twitch due to terror or unexpected surprise.
- Be filled with fright; become shocked.
It also directed me to see “start.” Here are those definitions:
start (-ed), v. [OE ‘to overthrow, overturn, empty, to pour out, to rush, to gush out’.] (webplay: quick, quickened).
- Spring to attention.
- Become active; to come into motion.
- Begin; to come into being.
- Incite; startle; suddenly bother; abruptly rouse with alarm; movement of body involuntarily due to surprise, fright, etc.
- Begin a trip or journey to a certain destination.
And, here’s a poem from ED with startled grass:
PRESENTIMENT is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.
I think I only thought about some of these themes very briefly as I ran. I recall running, listening to birds singing, feeling the sun shining, and then wondering about how it would feel, at this moment, to be startled by a darting squirrel or a lunging dog or a reckless bike. I wasn’t, and I soon forgot about being startled. I also remember thinking about the sound of startled grass — how would that sound? And then I thought about what startled grass might look like, how it might startle us. Then I thought about the grass on graves and Whitman’s uncut hair and ED’s “The Color of the Grave is Green”:
The Color of the Grave is Green –
The Outer Grave – I mean –
You would not know it from the Field –
Except it own a Stone –
To help the fond – to find it –
Too infinite asleep
To stop and tell them where it is –
But just a Daisy – deep –
After bookmarking it at least a week ago, I finally read Diane Seuss’s fabulous Commencement Address to the Bennington Writing Seminars posted on LitHub. I didn’t anticipate how it might fit with my before and during run thoughts, but it does, particularly the bit about grass and graves and the dead speaking to us, and us giving our attention.
A thought: Could we be the startled grass, surprised, shocked, fearful, but astonished, in wonder, alive and willing to reach down to the dead to give attention and life to their stories and to tell our own? For this to make sense, I should probably spend a little more time with Seuss’s speech…
I wanted to be surprised./ Jane Hirshfield
To such a request, the world is obliging.
In just the past week, a rotund porcupine,
who seemed equally startled by me.
The man who swallowed a tiny microphone
to record the sounds of his body,
not considering beforehand how he might remove it.
A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.
How easily the large spiders were caught with a clear plastic cup
surprised even them.
I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended.
Or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war.
Or that no one kept being there when the doorknob had clearly.
What should not have been so surprising:
my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others.
What did not surprise enough:
my daily expectation that anything would continue,
and then that so much did continue, when so much did not.
Small rivulets still flowing downhill when it wasn’t raining.
A sister’s birthday.
Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence.
That even today please means please,
good morning is still understood as good morning,
and that when I wake up,
the window’s distant mountain remains a mountain,
the borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing.
Its alleys and markets, offices of dentists,
drug store, liquor store, Chevron.
Its library that charges—a happy surprise—no fine for overdue books:
Borges, Baldwin, Szymborska, Morrison, Cavafy.