By Belana Beeck
Willie Lin’s Conversation Among Stones beautifully captures the search for truth among uncertainty, loss, and confusion. With life comes change, and Lin expounds upon the human experience of knowing one’s identity and purpose. Throughout the collection, there is a sense of urgency, and yet the authorial voice remains calm, as if accepting the past and ready to move forward, inspiring the reader to do the same—let go.
“When you read, you are full / of someone else’s sadness,” Lin writes. This line from “Little Fugues” stood out to me because it shows how this collection of poetry captures the essence of storytelling and expression. It showcases the ability for writers to turn pain into art, and for readers to empathize and relate to the author’s experiences. This is captured, as well, in the last poem, “Box of Stars,” when Lin writes, “and I can make something of suffering / the way I can make something of elbows.”
Willie Lin’s Conversation Among Stones uses metaphor, imagery, and repetition to express the feeling of loneliness, uncertainty, and healing from past trauma. There are several poems that include nature as a metaphor for emotional distress. In the first poem in the collection, “To You and For You,” Lin writes, “…hives must be fear in miniature, a swarming of infinitesimal / hooks and combs with its own scent and rhythm.” Words like ‘fear’ and ‘swarming’ create a sense of dread. The words also recall sound and a feeling of confusion and stress: the buzzing of a hive. This same poem later uses the imagery of “bees locked in amber” to convey the feeling of being stuck, a concept that later recurs in the collection. Likewise, the poem “Birth” does something similar with “the crows shuttling back and forth, / breaking branches, dropping stones.” This imagery introduces the idea of repetitive cycles which may lead to or represent feelings of anxiety.
Additionally, Lin uses imagery of the seasons to tell time, but also to create emotion. Winter and fall appear multiple times throughout the collection, evoking despair and death. She writes, “It was fall. It was the season / that made everything preceding it / seem mere rehearsal. Absurd / the brown, desiccated leaf / lowering itself now to touch you…” Here Lin paints one of the negatives of life: feeling repetitive and predictable like a rehearsal. When the dying leaves fall down to “touch you,” the image of despair reaches the reader, too. Later in the collection, Lin writes, “Winter multiplies / in snow, which in falling implies / secrecy.” The comparison of snow and secrets is repeated in the second to last poem, “Teleology”:
“Snow falls like a secret between you… / What happens despite the snow, / like Nebraska. The difficult path. / The dead squirrel. You’ve seen dead rats, / cats, deer, people, dutifully dressed and painted / to show pain no longer touches them, / and it’s never not terrifying… Snow falls / like lost missives… / The waiting keeps arriving / like driving snow… / You fold your arms across your chest / to keep yourself warm for a moment longer. / The weight is all you have.”
This poem mentions death and correlates it with the coldness of winter. Threaded throughout the collection is the idea that people pretend that pain no longer affects them, tying it back to the motif of the “rehearsal” mentioned above.
Lastly, the imagery of someone folding their arms across their chest for warmth is both negative and comforting. Folding your arms across your chest can suggest feeling uncomfortable or defensive. Nonetheless, this poem also alludes to self-soothing actions in the way that the crossed arms also bring the writer warmth. The last lines of the poem remind me that sometimes the only person you can count on is yourself, and that’s okay. There’s hope that regardless of the pain, things will resolve themselves and it’s important to accept the past and move forward.
The juxtaposition between the delicacy of snow and the dread it brings, appears in the symbolism of the color white. The color can represent honesty, innocence, and perfection, and yet, Lin uses it for darkness and disloyalty. When Lin asks, “what is ordinary sorrow?” she follows with “The days settle like snow, visiting each thing, lending a sameness to their shapes. / White on white. / Heavy is the head incapable of treachery.” The idea of white on white, implies the secrets layering up to cover something that was once pure. The imagery of days settling heavy like snow and everything appearing the same, creates the feeling of loss. Subsequently, this same poem, “Elegy for Misremembered Things,” utilizes repetition to capture trauma and goes back to the idea of being stuck or lost in memory. This is accomplished by repeating lines such as “You are always alone. You are never alone. / … / A boy pins you to the bed and cannot explain why. / … / Your matching uniforms, his red cheeks.”
More repetition seen throughout the collection are two sets of three poems, titled “Memory” and “Teleology.” While some are more reflective, all six of these poems maintain a somber tone.
I appreciate the relatability of these poems in their motifs of fear and uncertainty. In “After an Argument,” Lin writes of “days of fearing / whether there will be a path, / of inwardness, of confusing / proximity with desire…”. We often seek a path, and when it’s not there we get lost in not having security or purpose. “Too prone to darkness / all my life I have asked for a task, / a purpose to survive me.” This idea of purpose is important to these poems, as is the concept of immortality; of leaving a legacy. I appreciate that Lin added the line “Go out and do what you love. / It is enough.” In the end, we all seek fulfillment, and hope to be passionate about the hobbies and jobs we pursue.
Upon first reading the title, I asked myself why Lin named this book Conversations Among Stones. Stones are heavy and can sink quickly when thrown into a body of water, which ties into the idea of unhappiness and how it can weigh someone down present in the collection. More importantly, however, in “About the Poem,” Lin writes, “How given stone, we should love / stone, given fire, / we should learn to love fire. Given the cold / alternative.” To me this clearly highlights the idea that two stones create a spark, create light. In turn, this forms hope for the poet and reader. Therefore, the title comes from a place of optimism.
Conversations Among Stones is available from Bookshop, Green Apple Books, Secret Garden Books, Unabridged Bookstore, and Vroman’s Bookstore.
Belana Beeck is a prose and poetry writer, interested in fantasy, historical, and contemporary fiction. She is also eager to showcase her Latinx culture through her work. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University.