suddenly
All of a sudden
is a roundabout way
of telling ourselves
we want a more sudden word
than suddenly.
But, if unexpectedly
and in the blink of an eye
and even without warning
hold the sentence back
then all at once,
in a flash,
tout à coup,
and just like that
introduce a sentence
with no more dispatch
than suddenly,
than soudainement.
We still lack
a transition so abrupt
that–poof–the sentence shows up
sentences too soon
like the comeuppance
of rolling down the corridor
toward the readied room
where the decisive surgeon,
whose name you didn’t catch,
will make his incisions.
William Aarnes has published two collections with Ninety-Six Press—Learning to Dance (1991) and Predicaments (2001)—and a third collection, Do in Dour, from Aldrich Press (2016). His work has appeared in such magazines as Poetry, FIELD, and Red Savina Review.
“Suddenly” is one of a series of poems that I have been writing for about twenty-five years, poems that I think of as entries in a wordbook. These poems come out of a blend of impulses: the kind of attention one might find in a usage handbook, a focus on how the meanings of words shift (the kind of thinking that informs Raymond Williams’ Keywords), and, if I am lucky enough to have the inspiration, a bit of narrative that suggests how a word plays into a person’s life. “Suddenly” started long ago as an entry that focused on usage (a wish for a quicker word) but my undergoing bypass surgery helped me move the poem from commentary to urgency.
