The Rarity of Accidents

Abstract

In a poem by Alan Shapiro, the simultaneous accidents of beauty and trauma, the visitation of a hummingbird and the sudden fall of the brother who suffers from terminal brain cancer, appear in bitterly ironic contrast. The poet must interiorize both accidents in their incompatible simultaneity. The two events have considerable rarity — phenomenological and moral — in that both appear as ungrounded, inexplicable, unjustified. They are materially represented by the insubstantiality of a hummingbird’s beautiful whirring wings and by an equally insubstantial hospital gown whose papery lightness briefly and poignantly reveals the unbearable weight of the suffering body.