A core question that often drives explorations into family-historic conflict is: Who am I? Then, from its mere asking, the question crystallizes into a dazzling network of other interpersonally-related questions: who am I in relation to you? and you? and you? and them? and there? Part of what makes understanding one’s place in a family is the infinitude that question-asking evokes. Stark joins with the reader and makes question-asking as much a part of their journey as it is a part of the poem’s journey.
In “Inviting a Wolf into her Father’s Bed,” we read: “Oh reader, must we simply / explain everything? Must we know it all? [They were in love.] Their was was / obvious. Ours is not.” First, the title of this poem calls forth a bestial nature and fear of trust as well as devourment. This is what I mean, metaphorically, by problematizing ferocity—that there is a fierceness to a lyric that boldly proclaims the unknowability of a subject.
Furthermore, this unknowability feels intentional via the two lines: ‘Must we know it all? [They were in love.] Their was was / obvious.’ The way these questions guide us through and lead us to the statement ‘Their was was / obvious’ is extraordinary for how it makes the past into an object capable of being seen and held. Who am I in relation to you two? This is what their was seems to evoke; that this pair is obvious, sure, but the question being asked is less about history and more about the present. Positioning a declarative and known past next to an unknown and unstable present (Ours is not) serves to elegantly weave Stark’s logic of grief: that past pains stay with us for decades, sometimes centuries, to calamitous effect on one’s ability to operate in the present.
