19 pages • 38 minutes read
Layli Long SoldierWHEREAS
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“WHEREAS” employs no traditional meter, but develops in lines of free verse with no formal pattern of rhyme. The speaker is first-person. Stanzas are composed of eight couplets, one tercet, eight monostiches, and three final stanzas of unmetered, unrhymed prose poetry. In the case of the couplets, the first line is fairly long, with the second slightly shorter, all of which end in a semicolon.
The experimental form borrows structure from a primary source—a 2009 U.S. Senate resolution. As such, the long lines of the stanzas give the impression of a legal document, with one “article,” or stanza, giving away to the next, and connected through the repetition of “Whereas.” The poem borrows and then deconstructs the language of the source document to investigate meaning.
Anaphora
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or series of words at the beginning of successive phrases. The vehicle for this prominent poetic technique in “WHEREAS” is the titular word; every stanza begins with “Whereas.” In legal documents, the word is used to introduce a new passage or article, but the meaning of the word can be ambiguous. Long Soldier has said that in her work, the word is followed by an action. Rather than string together multiple parallel phrases, “Whereas” (Line 3) leads the reader into a completely fresh image or thought with each stanza. While the repetition itself can induce a kind of hypnotic state, the text that follows the word pulls the reader through the stages of the speaker’s shock and pain, stunned silence, affirmation, self-removal, self-recrimination, rage, regret, sharp acceptance, self-knowledge, revenge fantasy, and ultimate strength.
There are more than 30 uses of the word “whereas” throughout the poem.
Punctuation
In technical prose, the purpose of punctuation is to guide the reader in understanding the meaning of the text. This is true of poetry, as well, except the poet has considerably more latitude to manipulate punctuation beyond standard usage. “WHEREAS” uses punctuation that sticks close to the punctuation employed by the primary source that triggered and otherwise haunts this poem. The poem adheres to a version of the documentary form, but fills it with imagery that transforms the template to something far more visceral. Rather than being lulled by the repetition and semicolons, the reader plunges into each consecutive stanza with an increasing sense of peril before the speaker finds her footing and reimagines the scene with a different and more satisfying outcome.
In this poem, as in other poems in this collection, Long Soldier deftly employs a clean and meticulously polished sentence to slice through bloated rhetoric to reveal what’s underneath.
