1
The Cycle of Fast Animal
By Melanie Sires
Known for his use of sound in poetry, Tim Seibles in Fast Animal creates a new kind of
music that both celebrates and questions birth, aging, and everything in between. A collection
of odes, villanelles, and free-verse poems, Fast Animal is in part a time capsule as well as an
assertion into what it means to be human in a world that never sleeps. As emulated on the
front cover, the collection is full of contrast, and this collision of elements spins a web through
time that doesn’t allow for a beginning or an end. Right away the reader is presented with a
contrast of language and image between the title and photograph. The imagery of a receding
tide on the cover of the collection reflects the fluidity of the poetry inside—a current that
brings the past to the present and then back again. Seibles’ poems reinvent form and free-verse
structures alike, his speakers experiment with persona, and his voice conveys an awed
frustration. Through these opposing forces, readers are forced to loop back to what is reflected
in the mirrors of their own lives. In Fast Animal, Tim Seibles uses opposites in imagery, form,
and voice to create a sense of fluidity through time that allows readers to see themselves and
the world through a variety of perspectives.
The collection itself is divided into four parts, each titled with a roman numeral. If we
think of time as we know it to be—linear—than we can assume that each of these parts
represents a stage in life. But this is where we see one of the first contrasting elements of the
collection. Although the first section begins with “Born” we are quickly thrust into the world of
sleep at “4 A.M.” that appears to take place in the present, to a recalling of a childhood
friendship with “Terry Moore,” and then to the political poem “Vendetta, May 2006.” This
2
scattering of content is repeated throughout the rest of the sections, as if the speaker is
checking in with these periods and events of his life in order to give shape to the state of the
present. This enacts the meaning of many of the poems like “Familiar:” “So many words, such
fever: the names/ of the strained inhabitants moving// around, waiting to be called--/ my own
life: the bending” (24). The arrangement of the poems appears random at times, but a close
reading of the collection reveals that the mixture if very purposeful. It’s a mixture that reprints
itself throughout the book, as if the speaker needs to remember where he’s been.
The arrangement of the poems within the collection plays an important role in the selfreflection that they create. The sections that house these poems almost act like mirrors of each
other, as similar subject matter rotates from one section to the next. For example, almost all
the sections contain an ode, a villanelle, a poem titled by a name from the past, and some kind
of political poem. The rotation is further enhanced by the opening and closing poems that
encase all four sections. With similar imagery, the self-reflective lyrics “Later” and “The View”
convey a sense of uncertainty about the future, “I feel sure/ the way a seed/ feels sure/ shoving
a root// into black dirt: you/ can’t know/ what you’re becoming” (4), while maintaining a sense
of pride in the past, “I remember the seed/ in my blood,/ /the words// alive, how love/ raised a
fist” (90). This continues the imagery of a current: the poetry flows in a circular motion.
Within the poems themselves there is also a variety of contrasts, along with a multitude
of meaning coming from all different directions. Seibles’ use of form poems like the ode and
villanelle intermixed with poems in free-verse show us that structure as well as chaos is
happening all at once. His reinvention of these forms entwine perfectly with the carefully
constructed free-verse. Seibles does not create a section for form poems, but rather distributes
3
them “randomly,” which reminds the reader to take the good with the bad, the joyfulness with
the injustice, and the obsessive “rambling” with the straight-forward narrative. The poet’s focus
on the villanelle is important to note because the structure of this form is very repetitive with
its use of refrains. Seibles takes advantage of this “maddening” structure in “Mad Poets
Villanelle:” “The sunrise is nice, but the nightside is bad/ When light breaks the dawn, a black
sky turns blue/ I think I know why certain poets go mad” (20). Right away the contrasting
imagery seems to flip the poem upside down, while the momentum of the refrains tumble the
reader in this world where the speaker “can’t understand why [he] can’t understand” (20). The
contrasting imagery and cycling structure enact the self-reflective meaning of the poem: “It
looks like this chance is all that I had/ I say to the mirror, That just can’t be you” (20).
In “Ode to Sleep,” the poet uses personification as the speaker uses direct address to
bring sleep forward into the motion of life: “You take me back// to the untime/ where we are
never/ alone where Someone/ always calls me/ away from this long/ sentence, this/ blue
circus riding/ the sky river” (72). The imagery and use of metaphor enhance the comparisons of
sleep with time. The poet uses sound techniques like alliteration, assonance, and internal
rhyme to truly allow this lyric poem to sing. His use of diction with words like “crammed,”
“swerves,” “turn,” and “drifted” enact the fluid circular motion of the poem as well as the
collection as a whole. This subject matter is not only used in poems with traditional origins like
the ode, but is presented several times throughout the collection, such as in free-verse poems
like “Call:” “each night when eyes close,/ consciousness// dreams itself// free: the government/
of the tongue// dissolved, all memory/ scattered into everything” (82). This call to
consciousness brings forth questions about what it really means to be awake, and displays
4
another contrast found in Seibles’ poetry: society and the self, and how they interact with each
other.
In addition to contrasting his poems by structure, Seibles also contrasts by type of
poem: narrative versus lyric. Many of the poems in the collection call the speaker’s past
forward by narrating a childhood memory that involves a specific person. The narration of
“Allison Wolff” tells the story of “a black boy suddenly//walking the Jenkintown streets/ with a
white girl—so ridiculously/ conspicuous [they] must’ve been/ invisible” (51). The imagery of a
blurred “color line” enacts the merging of the poem as it delivers a lyrical meaning: “as if my
hand/ on her knee, her hand/ on my hand, my hand/ in her hair, her mouth/ on my mouth
opened/ and opened and opened” (51). The placement of the line breaks and commas, the
repetition, as well as the lack of punctuation mimic a spiraling motion as the poem comes to an
end. The poem suddenly becomes more than the sum of its parts. The open-endedness of the
concluding stanza signal that the speaker’s world has widened, and is looking toward the
future. The poet’s recalling of these interactions bring the reader both forward and backward in
time, creating an ebb and flow that allows for self-reflection.
Another way Seibles uses contrast to open up the world is with his voice. In “Blade, The
Daywalker,” “Blade, Historical,” “Blade, Unplugged,” “Blade, Unsympathetic,” and “Blade,
Epiphany” the poet uses a persona in order to create a barrier for the heavy political content.
Blade, a comic book character that is half human, half vampire, becomes the speaker’s alterego and reveals a frustration with society: “the seen,/ the unseen—the ones// who look in the
mirror/ and find nothing// but innocence though they stand/ in blood up to their knees” (27).
Through figurative language we again see this reflective imagery that the poet continues to
5
present to us. Although it is used in other examples, it is interesting to note the use of a
caesura—the pause between “innocence” and “though.” This break enacts the imagery of the
lines before it: someone looking in a mirror and assessing what they find there.
In the final poem of the series, this imagery is repeated: “No matter what, the light still
burns: in a mirror/ they see what they need to see” (76), as if these two poems are reflecting
each other. It is a defeated form of frustration as the tone changes from agitation to
acceptance. Like the other poems in the series, the speaker directly addresses the reader when
he asks, “Is this a life:// stuffing your mouth, chasing the hours,/ tracing yourself from daylight
to dark?/ Is this what you meant when you/ said the word free?” (76) The idea of unnecessary
busyness in the “human” world is a theme that resonates throughout the collection. These
poems are not grouped together in the collection, but are found interjected into the poetry in
sections II through IV. Although they clearly show a progression, the scattering of the “Blade”
series might suggest that they’re an intricate part of the “current” that is the project. These
poems say what normally can’t be said in everyday speech, but they are thoughts and
observations that flow in and out of our lives—it is up to us to decide what to do about them.
By presenting us with the opposing forces in his poetry, Tim Seibles is asking us to take a
better look at ourselves, our past, and our place in the world around us. Seibles himself does
this when he showcases a photograph of himself as a young man on the very first page of the
book. As we flip over to the back cover, we see the poet as he is today. We view this as a linear
progression, but once we delve into the collection this perspective is blown away. The scattered
and contrasting elements of the arrangement—form with free-verse, narrative with lyric, past
6
with present—create a cycle that is reoccurring. In Fast Animal, Tim Seibles reminds us that we
always have to look back in order to see where we are, and where we are going.
Works Cited
Seibles, Tim. Fast Animal. Wilkes-Barre: Etruscan Press, 2012. Print.