The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.
Notice what this poem is not doing.
A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of this place is yours?
Notice what this poem is not doing.
Every person gone has taken a stone
to hold, and catch the sun. The carving
says, "Not here, but called away."
Notice what this poem is not doing.
The sun, the earth, the sky, all wait.
The crows and redbirds talk. The light
along the hills has come, has found you.
Notice what this poem has not done.
✦
Analysis
Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing: analysis
Introduction
This short poem alternates quiet scenes of a rural landscape with a single repeated instruction to the reader. Morning light moves over hills, a farm and a quarry, and a graveyard with carved stones. Between each scene the poem says, "Notice what this poem is not doing".
The poem is about attention and restraint. It sets out images and declines to explain them. The refrain turns the reader's eye back on the poem itself. The poem can be read as a statement about what a poem should leave unsaid.
Summary
The first stanza describes morning light on the hills. It comes down slowly and picks out the trees as white. Then it moves across the ground, as if choosing stones.
The second stanza is a single line. It speaks to the reader directly: "Notice what this poem is not doing". This line becomes the poem's refrain.
The third stanza lists the features of a place: a house, another house, a barn and an old quarry. Near the quarry the river "shrugs". The stanza ends with a direct question to the reader: "how much of this place is yours?"
The fourth stanza repeats the refrain word for word. It again stands alone as one line. It interrupts the scene just as the first refrain did.
The fifth stanza turns to the dead. Every person who has died has taken a stone to hold and catch the sun. A carving on one stone reads, "Not here, but called away".
The sixth stanza repeats the refrain a third time. Coming after the graves, it now follows the poem's most serious image. Its wording is unchanged.
The seventh stanza returns to the landscape. The sun, earth and sky wait, and birds talk. The light along the hills has arrived and "has found you".
The last line changes the refrain. It now says, "Notice what this poem has not done". The tense has moved from the present to the perfect.
Themes and meaning
The main theme is restraint in art. The refrain tells the reader to look at what is missing. The poem does not state a moral, describe a feeling or tell a story. It offers the scene and leaves the meaning to the reader. One reading takes the poem as a statement about poetry itself.
A second theme is attention to the ordinary world. The light "comes down slowly" and seems to name and choose things. The poem asks the reader to look as carefully as the light does. Plain things, a house, a barn and stones, are enough to fill the poem.
Death and memory enter in the fifth stanza. Each dead person has "taken a stone" that catches the sun. The inscription treats death as an absence elsewhere, not an ending. The poem notably does not mourn. That restraint may be one of the things it asks us to notice.
Belonging and ownership form another thread. The question "how much of this place is yours?" can be read in two ways. It may ask whether we own the land, or how much of it lives in us. The poem does not answer.
The ending turns the poem toward the reader. The light "has found you", so the reader is now part of the scene. The final change from "is not doing" to "has not done" closes the poem as a finished act. It invites the reader to look back over what was left out.
Tone
The tone is calm, unhurried and quietly teasing. The descriptions move at the pace of the light, which "comes down slowly". The refrain adds a dry, playful edge. It points at the poem's own behaviour, almost like a wink.
The fifth stanza is gentle rather than sad. The phrase "Not here, but called away" is consoling in its own wording, and the poem adds nothing to it. The graves are met with calm, not grief.
The seventh stanza is warm and expectant. The sun, earth and sky "all wait", and then the light finds the reader. The final refrain is firm and complete. Readers disagree on whether the effect is a joke or a serious lesson. The even, plain voice allows both.
Form and structure
The poem has 16 lines in eight stanzas. Three-line stanzas alternate with one-line refrains. Lines run from 7 to 12 syllables. There is no regular metre, and the computed rhyme scheme shows no end rhyme apart from the repeated refrain.
The refrain appears identically in lines 4, 8 and 12. Line 16 alters it, so the computed scheme gives it a new letter. The alternation of scene and refrain creates a pause after each image. The changed last line makes the ending feel settled.
Poetic devices
Personification line 2
naming the trees The light behaves like a speaker giving things names, which links the light to the work of a poem.
Diction line 3
stones to nominate A formal, political word is applied to stones. It extends the idea of the light choosing and naming.
Refrain line 4
Notice what this poem is not doing. The repeated line breaks into each scene and turns attention from the landscape to the poem itself.
Repetition line 5
A house, a house, a barn The plain list reads like an eye moving across a view, naming things without comment.
Personification line 6
where the river shrugs The river makes a casual human gesture, suggesting indifference or ease.
Rhetorical question line 7
how much of this place is yours? The question pulls the reader into the scene and raises ownership without answering it.
Enjambment line 10
The carving The line ends on the carving, so the reader waits a beat before the inscription is given.
Euphemism line 11
"Not here, but called away." The inscription softens death into a summons elsewhere. The poem quotes it without comment.
Variation line 16
Notice what this poem has not done. The changed tense marks the poem as finished and invites a look back over its omissions.
Words worth knowing
nominate
To name or put forward for selection. Here the light seems to choose particular stones.
coasting
Moving smoothly along, as if without effort. The light glides over the ground.
quarry
A pit where stone is cut. It may connect with the gravestones of the fifth stanza.
redbirds
A common American name for the cardinal, a red songbird.
What readers have said
Mike McCulley sees the refrain as a device that focuses attention on what the poem does do, and on what the reader adds. Mike McCulley, 2005
Caroline Austin reads it as an ars poetica: a good poem holds things up to the light without telling us how to feel. Caroline Austin, 2020
!LeaF! reads the light as God and the poem as a warning of final judgement. !LeaF!, 2005
Matthew Finston argues the poem mocks Romantic nature poetry as full of empty images. matthew finston, 2006
Marilyn McKinstry thinks the poem says the stones and light need not tell us anything, since their being is enough. marilyn mckinstry, 2007
Kjirsten notes that it does not rhyme or follow familiar structures, and calls it closer to prose. Kjirsten, 2005
This poem is clearly not laughing at dead children, though that is just my opinion. Some of you may find that this poem draws humor from the reality of child mortality, but personally, I do not.
TyUnited States
This poem is clearly not telling you what it is not doing. I'm pretty sure that's the joke behind it.
Mike McCulleyUnited States
Telling the reader to 'Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing' is an interesting device to draw focus on what the poem is doing. Then notice what the reader adds between the lines make connections and extensions. The poem itself is actually rather spare, yet it draws me in, or is that me drawing me in?
KjirstenUnited States
The poem is clearly not rhyming, or following similar structural conventions for poetry, but is rather using a form of prose and calling itself a poem.
!LeaF!United States
After some thought and consideration, this poem appears to be warning of the day of final judgement, as told in the book of Revelations. The light symbolizes God and, in the poem, everything the light touches is judged, or, "named". "Every person gone [dead] has taken a stone to hold", and "catch the sun [be judged]". In the end, it makes a reference to the reader,the reader will be judged when "the light has found you". All the poem has not done is actually warn the reader or speak of death or judgement day, whilst these are the main subjects of the poem. BTW My colleague and I are not religious at all.
I don't understand it. What is it not doing? This does not appear to be a very good ode ppoem. I would know. We are studying ode poems at school in my English class.
WestonUnited States
Agreeing with a previous post, we are unnable to directly determine what the poem is NOT saying. In fact, these lines that seek to draw attention to the unnamed substance instead are used as a device to draw attention to what the poem IS doing. I believe that the poem, in talking about a cemetary and the beauty of the situation, and noticing as well that the narrator is directly referring to a "someone" leads us to believe that even in death, this person is not forgotten; au contraire, they are all but dead.
matthew finstonUnited States
Strafford uses rhetoric to denigrate Romantic poetry by suggesting that these poems about the beauty of nature do not have any depth. additionally, Stanford shows random images using the romantic style of poetry in order to suggest that Romantic poetry is filled with empty metaphors and meaningless themes. Furthermore, he uses the poetic structure in order to appeal to audiences whom appreciate poetry of this era and have also read poetry prior to his era, the romantic period.
marilyn mckinstryUnited States
i think stafford is saying that the stones, the light , the earth and water don't have to tell you anything. their very being is enough. that people expect to be entertained and therefore we miss the whole point of life-that we are here now and should be present because nothing lasts .
ea
I used to think I saw what this poem was not doing but I can not for the life of me see what it is now other than not pormoting itself. lol. I think what it is doing is describing very clearly the life (or job, if you will) of a poet or a poem. A good one, anyway.
ea
yes, that has occurred to me, that it is not rhyming. But though I like non rhyming poems, I always feel a little like I am cheating when I write a straight free verse poem that uses nothing artistic in its delivery because I feel like I could just as well write it as a piece of prose and why bother with poetry and being somehow special. lol.
Sharon PetersCanada
Well the poem clearly isn't rhyming.
ea
I just remembered what this poem has not done; it hasn't died. Yes, credit me, Marcy Jarvis, with that brilliant thesis.
I think this is an ars poetica poem. It is telling you what a good poem does and doesn’t do. A good poem, per Stafford, doesn’t tell you how to feel about something, at least directly. It holds things up to the light. We make meaning from the world around us, but the poet offers new ways to find meaning.
What is it not doing... I dont see it.
This poem is clearly not laughing at dead children, though that is just my opinion. Some of you may find that this poem draws humor from the reality of child mortality, but personally, I do not.
This poem is clearly not telling you what it is not doing. I'm pretty sure that's the joke behind it.
Telling the reader to 'Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing' is an interesting device to draw focus on what the poem is doing. Then notice what the reader adds between the lines make connections and extensions. The poem itself is actually rather spare, yet it draws me in, or is that me drawing me in?
The poem is clearly not rhyming, or following similar structural conventions for poetry, but is rather using a form of prose and calling itself a poem.
After some thought and consideration, this poem appears to be warning of the day of final judgement, as told in the book of Revelations. The light symbolizes God and, in the poem, everything the light touches is judged, or, "named". "Every person gone [dead] has taken a stone to hold", and "catch the sun [be judged]". In the end, it makes a reference to the reader,the reader will be judged when "the light has found you". All the poem has not done is actually warn the reader or speak of death or judgement day, whilst these are the main subjects of the poem. BTW My colleague and I are not religious at all.
I don't understand it. What is it not doing? This does not appear to be a very good ode ppoem. I would know. We are studying ode poems at school in my English class.
Agreeing with a previous post, we are unnable to directly determine what the poem is NOT saying. In fact, these lines that seek to draw attention to the unnamed substance instead are used as a device to draw attention to what the poem IS doing. I believe that the poem, in talking about a cemetary and the beauty of the situation, and noticing as well that the narrator is directly referring to a "someone" leads us to believe that even in death, this person is not forgotten; au contraire, they are all but dead.
Strafford uses rhetoric to denigrate Romantic poetry by suggesting that these poems about the beauty of nature do not have any depth. additionally, Stanford shows random images using the romantic style of poetry in order to suggest that Romantic poetry is filled with empty metaphors and meaningless themes. Furthermore, he uses the poetic structure in order to appeal to audiences whom appreciate poetry of this era and have also read poetry prior to his era, the romantic period.
i think stafford is saying that the stones, the light , the earth and water don't have to tell you anything. their very being is enough. that people expect to be entertained and therefore we miss the whole point of life-that we are here now and should be present because nothing lasts .
I used to think I saw what this poem was not doing but I can not for the life of me see what it is now other than not pormoting itself. lol. I think what it is doing is describing very clearly the life (or job, if you will) of a poet or a poem. A good one, anyway.
yes, that has occurred to me, that it is not rhyming. But though I like non rhyming poems, I always feel a little like I am cheating when I write a straight free verse poem that uses nothing artistic in its delivery because I feel like I could just as well write it as a piece of prose and why bother with poetry and being somehow special. lol.
Well the poem clearly isn't rhyming.
I just remembered what this poem has not done; it hasn't died. Yes, credit me, Marcy Jarvis, with that brilliant thesis.
I think this is an ars poetica poem. It is telling you what a good poem does and doesn’t do. A good poem, per Stafford, doesn’t tell you how to feel about something, at least directly. It holds things up to the light. We make meaning from the world around us, but the poet offers new ways to find meaning.
no swearing please, theres kids around