Summary Of Soon I Will Build An Ark By Wendy Scott

Every reader knows the feeling: the sudden sensation of pain after finishing a piece of poetry, the realization of what has just been described. This sensation is an effect of the volta, meaning “turn” in Italian. In her series of poems Soon I Will Build an Ark, Wendy Scott successfully uses the volta as a device to convey the dark memories of her family members. By inserting powerful turns at the end of her poems, Scott is able to give the reader both a specific emotion, as well as pieces to her family narrative.

The idea of the “turn” is a poetic concept that dates back to early Italian sonnets. These sonnets were typically comprised of two parts: the problem and the resolution. The problem of the sonnet was introduced in the octave of the

The poems begin with beautifully written imagery, with the volta revealing the horrors of her family’s past. The death of a sister is conveyed in numerous pieces, such as “My Mother Stops Feeding Hummingbirds”. The poem is placed in the beginning of the collection and opens with colorful descriptions of her mother’s love for feeding the hummingbirds in her yard. The turn then strikes with the line, “Then / she adopted my dead sister’s dog…” (Scott 4). With this line the tone of the poem changes instantly. Later in the book, the cause of death becomes slowly more evident. The poem “Shroud” discusses an experience at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with her disintegrating sister, ending with the striking lines, “I sensed that weight, felt / Captain Morgan as if / he brushed against my hip.” Finally, the reader’s suspicions are confirmed at the end of the book with “Making up Stories about all that Jägermeister”. In this piece Wendy Scott creates scenarios in which her sister could have consumed these bottles of liquor. What begins as an almost playful, imaginative poem ends in a somber thought. Scott again cleverly utilizes the volta, but this time in the form of a question to her deceased sister. She writes, “Was it weeks or years ago / you ceased to see the fridge, / no longer noticed warm?” (Scott