“At the Vet’s” by Maura Stanton is a relatively straightforward poem about how people react in the face of sadness and tragedy. It comes near the beginning of her book of poetry, Immortal Sofa and is a prime example of her use of high drama and narrative in her poems.
“At the Vet’s” tells the story of a group of people in a veterinary office overhearing a tragic conversation between one man and the vet. First, there is the description of the sick dog, which is brief but startling enough to catch the attention of the reader. The story describes the people in the waiting room as they listen to the vet discuss the man’s sick dog, and how it is likely the dog will not survive. The people in the waiting room, including the receptionist, listen with rapt attention. When the man leaves, his face shows that he is extremely grief-stricken over the news. Those who heard his story can only sit in stunned silence as he leaves, unable to reach out to him and yet unable to look away, either. His grief has changed their day, from routine to tragic, and this shock leaves them all unable to speak.
When simply looking at “At the Vet’s” itself, the first thing one notices is that it has a very rectangular shape. It feels very heavy and has a lot of substance on the page. It is not a very long poem, but the shape of it makes it seem longer than it really is. The lines and the sentences of the poem do not match up. The second sentence in the poem takes up seven lines, and most other sentences run over more than one line, too. The sentences are long, somewhat run-on, which gives an urgent, hurried feel to the poem. This hurried feeling contrasts with the heavy shape of the poem itself. The combination of stable lines and rushed sentences makes the poem seem almost dream-like, as though reality and dream have mixed together. The poem reflects the feeling one would have at receiving bad news, or even when feeling empathy for one who has received bad news. The shock of something bad in the midst of the everyday goings on of the world is disconcerting, and the poem captures that feeling very well.
The language of “At the Vet’s” is very straightforward and reminiscent of everyday talk at the beginning, which is a Modernist technique. The description of the smell of fear on the persona’s cats is also a very Modernist description, telling exactly what the smell is like and how the persona’s body reacts to it. As the poem goes on, the language becomes more metaphorical, as Maura Stanton describes the vet and the owner of a sick dog as singers and the people in the waiting room as audience members. The “audience members” listen as the “soprano” vet and the “baritone” owner talk in the examining room about the fate of the man’s pet dog, and when the man leaves the vet’s office, the people in the waiting room are “too stunned to applaud” the little scene they have just listened to. The metaphors Stanton uses liken the sad events to a play or an opera, something used to entertain. The fact that the people who overheard seem unable to reach out to the man, whom they obviously feel sorry for, also hints that they feel disconnected from him as they would actors on a stage.
As “At the Vet’s” begins very simply, the use of this highly dramatic metaphor is interesting to the reader, and is a good example of Maura Stanton’s use of strange metaphors in her poetry. The transformation of the people in the office, who were once doing daily routines and are now stunned into an awkward silence, is an example of Stanton’s use of narrative. “At the Vet’s” tells a dramatic story about how certain events can change a person’s entire day and mood. It is a great example of Stanton’s use of imagination and metaphor in everyday life, a theme in Immortal Sofa.
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