Reviewed by Margaret Anne Kean
The Loneliest Whale in The World
by Tom Hunley
Terrapin Books
March 2024, Paperback, 112 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1947896727
In an essay titled, “The Poetry Collection is a Place for Disparities, Or Let It Bleed,” Jennifer Givhan writes: “A poetry collection is a place for disparities and oppositions and paradoxes to coexist and coalesce and stretch us to find new ways of existing within the flux….I’ve found the most freedom in my work when I’ve allowed everything to bleed, as I have bled.”
In Tom Hunley’s latest poetry collection, The Loneliest Whale in the World, the author generously opens his life to his readers, engaging in a dialogue with himself and with us about how to navigate and be fully present for all the twists and turns of life. Within these poems, we are invited to ponder how we process hard truths of aging, autism, abuse, of death by suicide, or those small internal deaths that come from being misunderstood or excluded.
The first poem, titled “Commencement Address,” is a brilliant way to open the book. Just as a traditional commencement address is often filled with advice for those at the end of one journey and the beginning of the next, this poem dispenses advice on what to expect in the following pages and what approach will lead to a successful reading.
The first line starts as though we’ve tuned in partway through the speech: “Now walk into a bar full/of nuns, cockroaches, and dragons.” (7) This turn on an oft-repeated joke line offers us a strange juxtaposition of images that illustrate Hunley’s humor, which is an undercurrent in the book, as is his surprising and refreshing way of thinking and seeing the world. Using those three images he offers this advice on how to live well: “Change habits./Outlive the next war./Breathe fire.”
Throughout the book, the poet offers a view of life that is full-throated and built around generosity, tenacity, openness to joy and to wanderlust. He asks us to shake up our complacency, to be fierce and open to seeing things through a different lens. It is an urging to live life fully even in the midst of circumstances that are harrowing.
Waltz like a shy sunbeam
crawling across a wall
in search of a window to climb through. (7)
“My Chili Recipe: An Ars Poetica” is a perfect example of Hunley’s offbeat humor, and original way of expressing himself. The first part of the poem is a listing of ingredients called “I. Whatcha Need.” Among the long list are: “the river/3 pounds ground beef/the passing of the dead on the banks of what remains/4 Tbsp. minced garlic/a galloping/sound/2 diced green peppers/the sound of a violin being shattered by a perfectionist…”(43)
The second half, titled “II. Whatcha Do” starts with these lines:
Begin with the river. Brown beef and memories of the
dead with garlic, green peppers, the heartsong of the
near-shattered violinist, and onion. Love the world
the way a horse’s spirit gallops in its body. Add the whistles…”(44)
Hunley takes ordinary and expected things in life and mixes them up, like one does when following a recipe. By his use of poetic form, formatting, syntax, word choices, he demonstrates how life really unfolds – not just for him, but for us.
Throughout his book, he asks readers to engage with experiences that both touch our understanding and elude it, as in the poem “Will Be Done,” written for a former student who died by suicide.
Will you wake in another world among the stars?
Will it feel strange not having the darkness you’re used to?
The darkness you used to carry everywhere?
There’s light in this puddle and my face in this puddle
and when I step, there’s a splash and the light goes away
and my face goes away but both return.
The light will never return to your face… (34)
How do we hold close those things that fall out of the scope of our understanding, when, like the author, we become the “loneliest whale in the world,” unable to communicate with or be heard by others?
Whether in a prayer, or a playful dialogue between rock, paper and scissors, Hunley continually surprises us with the leaps of imagination he makes from line to line. His musicality, employing all the sounds of language, make these images dance on the page. Repetition plays a large role in the writing, through the use of alliteration, series of poems (there are five variations of “Rock, Paper, Scissors…), and poetic forms, as in the poem “If You’ve Met One Autistic Person, You’ve Met One Autistic Person,” which is a rondel.
There is beauty and compassion present in these poems, even as the speaker expresses frustration and anger.
“Dear God Show Me How to Walk in Wonder” is one example of authentic honesty and tenderness. This prayer poem addresses the poet’s first reaction to the birth of a son who is autistic and cannot speak for years. “I was struck dumb, as silent as You,” he writes. (10) The poet engages with the absence or silence of God that we often feel when we are faced with something hard and painful. As the poet continues the poem and grapples with his role as a father, he connects to God as parent: “…and forgive me,/I turned my head from him./I know You’ll understand. Forgive me/for reminding You how You turned Your head/while Your son hung there.” (10)
Sometimes, God, I stumble like a foal,
a fool, a fawn, a phony. I fail, I fall,
I, who taught, by tall example,
my children to walk. (10)
The alliteration here beautifully conveys the sense of the speaker trying to make sense, trying to find words to somehow better understand himself. And still, the speaker allows vulnerability and self-compassion to creep in as he writes: “Dear God, show me how to walk in wonder/toward You and knock me over/when I walk away from You/but let me let my children/walk away from me.” (10,11)
As he ends the poem, he gives names to his four children as he seeks to capture their essence. This feels elemental, as though this naming occurred before the language of names devolved into single words: “She Who Fills My Head And Heart…”, “He Who Beats Drums…” and “He Who Slaps the Bass And…”
The fourth and last name he lists is the one for his first-born son who is autistic: “He Who Ventures Far Into The Cold//To A World Inside Himself/That No One Else Can Ever Enter.” After which, the poet turns to God with a prayer of great faith and desire: “Not even I can go there,/but I believe You can go there./Dear God, please go there.” (11)
In the poem, “I never pushed my daughter,” Hunley writes about the difficulty of parenting a daughter who was adopted as a teenager after being abused and in the foster care system. Hunley chooses to portray the difficulties by contrasting what her life could have been if he had become her father when she was a baby, versus what it was really like for her. He lists all of the experiences they could have shared in the negative: “I never pushed my daughter//in a stroller through the park/lost in a trance as the trees/seemed to listen as she//tried out sounds…” (14) He writes,
…No, I got her after fire
got her, burned the world
she knew…”
I never tossed her
in the air, laughing,
sure I’d catch her
and if we played tag
a rolling boulder was it
and it wanted to flatten us… (15)
Even when describing this sadness and other such experiences, Hunley’s writing has an exuberance and energy that conveys the thoughts and feelings of one who is fully engaged with life. You can tell he is listening to language, and following the trail wherever it flows.
Although each poem grows from specific experiences the poet has as a father, writer, husband, friend and teacher, the titles of the sections are signposts to the reader, encouraging us to see these poems in a larger context: “Love as the World Ends,” “Between Worlds,” and “A World Inside This World.” Grounded in the day-to-day quotidian, Hunley challenges us to view these moments within a greater movement that reaches beyond each individual. As he shares each moment, Hunley seems to be asking us how we will respond to reading his words about his greatest joys and his biggest regrets. He writes in “To Make Light of the Dark,”
But I can’t bear the thought that the words
I’ve found to make light of the dark
won’t leave a mark more lasting
than a dent on a dead man’s pillow. (76)
Hunley’s writing has been described as fully-formed surrealistic poetry, for which he gives credit to having an autistic son who has a different way of viewing the world. Which brings us to the title of the book. The 52-Hertz cry of a never-seen whale has mystified scientists since 1989. So low that no one can detect it, even other whales, this cry has been associated with an animal tagged by the moniker, “The Loneliest Whale in the World.”
In Hunley’s closing poem, “Questions for Further Study,” he associates this whale with autism. He writes:
Is autism the beginning of a new stage of consciousness?
What would you say to the loneliest whale in the world if
he could hear or understand you if you could hear his
lonely 52-Hertz cry just lower than the lowest note on a
tuba inaudible even to other whales? (90)
He is not just asking us to consider there may be other stages of consciousness beyond our understanding. He also seems to invite us to consider whether we too are the loneliest whales in the world, unable to communicate or be heard by others. And can we ask ourselves the right questions that could change that?
Cast as a study guide for readers of the collection, this narrative poem employs Hunley’s humor and inventiveness. He asks, “Do these words move across your heart a) like/tumbleweeds across a desert b) like wind gusts blown in/from the sea or c)like the beautiful new person at work/who gets promoted before learning your name?” (90)
Harkening back to the first poem’s exhortation to “Waltz like a shy sunbeam/crawling across a wall/in search of a window to climb through,” Hunley ends the book with this call to joy:
What is the probability of being born? One in 400 trillion
according to some guy on the Internet. Wow! Here we are
somehow IRL and on the WWW. How does anyone ever
yawn, and why can’t we all live every moment in awe like
Adam at the moment when he first saw Eve or like the first
Cro-Magnan to gaze at a bison and paint it on the cave wall? (91)
The juxtaposition of the ordinary with images that aren’t typically paired together, keeps the reader off-balance throughout Hunley’s collection. Simultaneously it invites the reader into a world where language and our understanding of its meanings are front and center and the heart is exposed to the weather.
About the reviewer: Margaret Anne Kean received her BA from Scripps College and her MFA from Antioch University/Los Angeles. Her chapbook collection, Cleaving the Clouds, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals including Whale Road Review, Amethyst Review, Eunoia Review, San Antonio Review, EcoTheo Review, Rogue Agent, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Tupelo Quarterly. She is collaborating with a Portland, Oregon composer to set a tanka series.