Notes on “Pellets" by Claire Gunner
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By Marina Kraiskaya​
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The cadence of this short poem begins by almost mirroring the language one might hear in a classroom, as we imagine a child saying, "this is what we did in school today." The use of "we had to" adds a sense of indignation, reluctance, or skepticism to the memory, which takes on a completely new context in the speaker's adult life. "Take each small death you get / and order it" holds so much weight. I love the multiple potential meanings of "order" — on the one hand, adults must be orderly, clean, scientific, logical, and able to separate emotion from event; meat from bone. And yet children especially know that humans aren't born to be cold and efficient — that we each will play both the hunter and the prey. Adults may not necessarily empathize less with a living creature that is destroyed, but in a more complex and darker way — we have experienced these small deaths. Alongside the poem's conversational, prose-like quality, I appreciate its use of concise lines. "Some still bore sticky tufts of fur," "I wonder what that lesson was," and "Save and stack a pile of bones," at 7 syllables, call back to each other, and the 10-syllable count of "Take each small death you get / and order it" and "Follow the hunter in secret, and find" adding a subconscious sense of fullness or finality there.​
"Pellets" is the second poem Claire Gunner has published in our journal — you can also check out her great poem, "NDA​," in Issue 6.
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Notes on “Pellets" by Claire Gunner
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“Pellets” is a small poem grappling with a big topic. I was impressed by this contemplation of an activity I was also subjected to in school; an activity that had until now remained unexplored in my own memory. With clear diction, Claire Gunner articulates beautifully the strangeness, the absurdity, the discomfort produced by this task and then turns an adult’s eye to it. “I wonder what that lesson was,” the second stanza begins, and she explores several possibilities. But they all seem to point to the same dark conclusion, that this was an education in the hierarchies of power. Two choices were presented: you could either be the “hunter” or “the thing that fed it”, and the better you figured out how to “take each small death you get / and order it,” the more likely you were to stay at the top. This poem’s cool observational tone and simple language — the language of grade school — add to its chilling effect.
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