The 40-Minute World is Not Enough

In Adrienne Rich’s “Storm Warnings”, we see metaphors comparing hostile weather to inner tempest and unwelcome change. The title, “Storm Warnings”, represents the uselessness of predictions to cope with a challenging experience. These forecasts signal an uncomfortable, and unalterable event, one that “clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter” (17).

The first line compares “the glass [that] has been falling all the afternoon” (1) to clear raindrops. The “instrument” (2) mentioned in the next line literally refers to a barometer or thermometer, commonly used to analyze weather. Metaphorically, we can also consider the news as an instrument for weather forecast, or any upcoming change in the surroundings. Because the narrator knows better than these instruments, he or she accepts that they undermine reality, and, thus, the narrator braces for the incoming change. This first stanza depicts a specific case of the repetitive phenomenon described in the last stanza. In a way, this organization illustrates an eternal loop.

The weather and its changes not only represent, literally, a storm, but they also metaphorically symbolize social unrest outside of the shelter that is the home. Likewise, the metaphor indicates inner turmoil.

Time is given a hazardous, aggressive, and mysterious personality, when Rich commands the reader to “[…] think again, as often when the air / Moves toward a silent core of waiting, / How with a single purpose time has travelled / By secret currents of the undiscerned / Into its polar realm” (8-12). The “single purpose” makes the change a determined one. The “silent core of waiting” describes the peace the such a change feels it must disrupt, and the undiscerned winds contrast with determination of its travels to give the change a “polar personality”.

We see the metaphor deepen when Rich writes how “Weather abroad / And weather in the heart alike come on / Regardless of prediction” (12-14). Here we see the futility of knowledge, hypotheses, instruments, and theories when faced against the actual event. Furthermore, the metaphor’s inclusion of inner discomfort is clearly seen in this citation. She emphasizes the ineffectiveness of preparation by saying how “Between foreseeing and averting change / Lies all the mastery of the elements / Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter” (15-17).

The narrator exposes the prison of unheralded change by explaining how all the preparations are “[…] the things we have learned to do / Who live in troubled regions” (27-28).

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