Gabrielle Hunt - Outside Reading 2

Gabrielle Hunt

31 March 2012

Outside Reading 2

Greg Delanty – The Alien

                In Dr. Paul’s Poetry Writing class, we’re reading Billy Collins’ collection of poetry, 180 More. Ransom’s journey from Earth to Malacandra brought to mind one of the earliest poems in this book, Greg Delanty’s “The Alien.” I’ve pasted it below to save you the trouble of googling:

“The Alien” – Greg Delanty

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way

          of your ultrasound, scanning the dark                                                                                                                                                matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say

          is chockablock with quarks & squarks,

gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

                                                            

who art there inside the spacecraft

          of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,

               hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft

          on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,

our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

                                                                                

to make contact, to ask divers questions

          about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss

                    the whole shebang of the beginning&end,

          the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why

and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die

          for you even, that we pray you're not here

                    to subdue us, that we'd put away

          our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share

our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.

                Despite the fact that this poem is about the unborn son or daughter of the narrator, as sighted on the black-and-white futuristic-looking ultrasound, it still echoes with the scene in which Ransom first wakes up in the spaceship and can see the stars through the skylight above him. It seems crystal clear; he can see far more stars than were ever visible back on earth. He sees what he thinks is the moon (but which turns out to be the earth), larger than seems possible.

                Ransom is facing something entirely new and strange. As hard as he tries to reconcile it to what he knows (the moon and stars as seen from earth), he eventually cannot and collapses. Rather than being curious like the parents in the poem, he is dismayed and frightened. He is more like the fetus in this situation, trapped in the spaceship and facing something like he’s never experienced in his life. The aliens are waiting expectantly and hopefully without ray guns, missiles, and attitude, perhaps with questions upon questions about where these strange creatures have arrived from.