Stand Still in the Light by Milton J. Bates (review)

I have long admired the diverse talents of Milton J. Bates. After establishing himself as an eminent Stevens scholar in the 1980s with the publication of Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self and editions of Stevens's essays and notebooks, in the 1990s Bates turned to cultural studies and narrative theory in The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling and went on to coedit a two-volume series for Library of America, Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1975. Then, yet another direction emerged more than a decade later: an ecological/historical/cultural study of the Bark River in Wisconsin that also adds to our understanding of the state, if not America, in The Bark River Chronicles: Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed. All the while he produced, seemingly with his left hand, scholarly articles and presentations on Stevens and others. And now this, Stand Still in the Light, a book of admirably accomplished poetry.

Like Wallace Stevens, who once observed that he was the same person whether handling law cases or writing poetry, Bates exhibits here the same powers of keen observation and elucidating description that mark his scholarly studies. The very title, Stand Still in the Light, invites one to pay attention, to be alert to one's surroundings, to notice that minor details, whether in the natural world, the Vietnam conflict, or an anecdote, can be illuminating. The technique that Bates most often employs, and one used expertly in all his writings, is narration. Bates is a master storyteller, and, although his stories in this volume are personal recollections, they are told with such precision and original expression that the reader shares in the experience.

In one of his poems, "Road Kill Retro-Loop," Bates describes seeing a dead deer beside the road and then rewinds the imagination's film to the moments leading up to the accident. He organizes the entire collection as a similar kind of backward look. He begins the first section with the present, living on the shores of Lake Superior, and then in three other sections reverses the record of his life to earlier times—from his travels to various countries and states, to his Vietnam war experiences, to his teens—before circling back to moments leading up to his retirement and the move north. There is just the slightest hint of the youth making the man, as in "Summer of '63," when, handicapped with a broken hand and begrudgingly staining the siding on the family's cabin, he discovers he is not alone: quail appear in the driveway, a woodchuck lumbers to the meadow, bats and nighthawks skim for insects at dusk, a whippoorwill rehearses its whistle. "Maybe you have to be broken just / enough to mend in ways you didn't know / you needed to mend" (69).

Some of the poems are simply heartwarming, as if listening to a tale on a cold winter's evening by the fireside; others expand with deeper meaning. All display Bates's wit, fresh imagery, clever comparisons, and subtle understatement. Bates begins with "Naturalized," an explanation of why he and his wife decided to settle forty-six degrees north after retirement, but tells it "slant," as Dickinson would say. One year a gray squirrel moves into an otherwise red squirrel territory. The next year, a mate shows up. The poem hinges on two questions that are really answers. Conveying acceptance, neighbors wonder, "Any sign / there'll be a litter of little ones this spring?" This prompts Bates to reflect back on the question asked years earlier while passing through, "What if we chose to live here?" (1).

Some poems raise philosophical or religious issues. In "Since You Asked about Our Deck Lights," Bates explains that he and his wife keep the perimeter on their deck lit for months after Christmas because it creates "in the darkness an outpost of light" (12), reminding one of Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," in which the illuminated café terrace wards off the existential...