‘Halfway Down’

This poem depicts how often a chance encounter will reverberate in each being in a different manner. While the deer is frightened and will eventually, according to the poet, outrun her fear, the poet will cherish the moment. He was able to put himself in the deer's soul, understand and empathize with her. He will remember the moment as an event which demonstrates not only the effect humans have on wild animals, but also the effect the wild animal's fear had on him. The poet hopes his poem will cause readers to reflect what our relationship is not only to animals, but also to every other being. We can surmise that others forget what we do to them, but the memory of our encounters may haunt us for many years. This poem is evocative, philosophical, and memorable. Great choice Ms. Trethaway

I owe Natasha Trethewey an apology. The "odd encounter" to which she refers is not the encounter between the speaker and the deer. It is the encounter between the speaker and himself, which can, indeed, be construed as odd. Forgive my carelessness.

"Halfway Down," a poem, by Chad deNiord, Sunday Times Magazine, Oct. 25, 2015. One of Wordsworth's definitions of lyrics is "Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." With all due respect to the great poet, one can show that the flow of feelings is measured and, more often than not, fused with thought. But, undeniably, in "Halfway Down," the reader sees the effort to recall the exact feelings that an unexpected event triggered in the speaker. Skillfully, DeNiord recaptures his speaker's impressions,thoughts, and feelings of a sudden encounter, halfway down a meadow, with a doe. Both stand sill, stare at each other, momentarily; then, the doe flees, the speaker's image goading her on, from one meadow to another, only to forget it, later. However, the speaker reacts to the doe's flight differently; he roams, "like a deer" and "remembering." DeNiord leaves it to the reader to fathom why the speaker feels the sighting of the deer and its flight have split him in two.
To an animal in the wild, man represents danger, despite the fact that the man in question is nonviolent and still. But his stillness is not reassuring; it still ignites mortal fears in the doe. It's as though the speaker could exorcize the impact on him of his experience with the doe only by writing a poem about it. "Halfway Down" puts the reader in a meditative mood and induces in her/him thoughts about animals' fears of humans. What have we done to animals through the ages to make us frightful? Fine poem.

I like this poem quite a bit. So many contemporary poems these days consist of a rather two-dimensional description of an incidentk with a sentiment tacked onto it. This poem goes a little deeper. It reminds me of other human-animal encounter poems, such as Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose," or Galway Kinnell's "The Bear."

But the poem it reminds me the most of is Robert Frost's "The Most of It," in which Frost seems to want to have the same kind of transcendent transference with an embodiment of nature that Deniord achieves in "Halfway
Down."

In Frost's poem, "a great buck" appears, but no spark arcs between Frost and the buck, which after briefly appearing, disappears into the underbrush. Frost concludes: "and that was all."

Is Frost being too 'realistic' to make the imaginative leap that Deniord makes? Deniord makes such an imaginative leap seem plausible.

Natasha Trethewey calls the speaker's experience with the doe an "odd encounter." What's so odd about it? Here in the Hudson Valley, we folks come face to face with deer all the time. Also with raccoons, opossums, skunks, and sometimes black bears and red foxes. As a poet and teacher of literature and creative writing, I have read scores of poems by both students and established poets on the subject of human encounters deer. Most are sentimental and/or mediocre. This one resonates.