poem
 

Hi, Cally—

I like the connection here between the sea and death, the bird serving as the herald of both.
I would have expected “a missing man” and “an empty boat.” The ironic transposition suggests that the “empty” man has either sought his own death or else ventured recklessly alone into the [wine?] dark sea. The use of the flotsam and jetsam for divination is a vivid touch. In all, you managed to put a lot into a very compact poem. Nice work.

Glenn

Good, very good, but... what would happen if you put the second stanza first, then had the (previous) first stanza, then the third?

Hope this helps.

I think the last five lines alone would be a lovely poem. I can't say I dislike the opening strophe (it reads well), but it strikes me as relatively heavy-handed and abstract, and it relies quite heavily on the over-familiar trope of death being dark and black, etc. The last five lines, to me, seem relatively fresh and original, and would be a mini-poem almost like an Asian figure.

Either way, I can't really see how the title suits the poem.

The title plays double for me.
The first line posits the willing away of death, its banishment through will power.
Whereas the rest of S1 take willing in a different sense, to be willing, to surrender to death's darkness.

I love the title and the whole poem.

Nemo

Another lovely poem, Cally. I can't help but think of the Buddha and the responsibility of learning the willingness to transition. Over the last years, we received updates on how Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) was doing as he moved toward transition. I can only dream of facing my days as he did.

That's what I read here and the simplicity is perfect. I think Cam has an interesting suggestion. I'm not rejecting it. But as it is now I read the first stanza almost as a chorus in Aeschylus or Homer. The opening theme is announced and then the action occurs. Thinking this way does cause me to want more while also seeing this is as it is and that is good. I hope this makes sense.

I love this.

I presumed the man is empty because the boat is missing. I like the sense of distance with the sea bird news and the evidence seeking closure. Enjoyed.

It also occurs to me that the topography of the poem follows the same thread as the morphing of the word willing: the first stanza being a rational flourish of willed thought, while what follows breaks down into the sort of imaginal logic that only poetry (which is always willing to die in various ways) can elucidate. A choice is offered, and the poem takes it. That leaves it up to the reader not to resist : to be Willing.

Nemo

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I'm in the mood to resist overthinking this, though that's not to say it doesn't deserve deep thought. But I feel satiated with the meaning I get just by letting the images play together. Maybe I'll come back when I'm in the mood to make more of it than it is to me at the moment. At the moment, it is light and dark, simple and mysterious.

It's interesting that others suggest re-ordering the stanzas. It is an attractive thought. But to my mind it speaks to the poem's confluence of thoughts and images. it is as if the stanzas are interchangeable and can give the poem a different slant depending on the order. That's remarkable to me.

My only possible nit might be to lose the parenthetical. But I also love what it does. (It whispers to the reader).

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Cally,

I can't say I understand the lines "a missing boat / an empty man" but I like them very much - I'll be savoring them for a while. A suicide? In some ways it doesn't matter. I feel the last five lines could make a go of it on their own, but I wouldn't want to scupper the rest.

Best,

Ed

Thanks for all your thoughts on this one!

Hi Glen! Glad you liked it. Yes, the kind of death I'm playing with here is the loss of self, into what could be described as oceanic consciousness, a letting go of borders and boundaries. I love the sea as a metaphor for death because it's so empty on one hand, yet so full and rich and mysterious/unknowable on the other.

Yes, I see what you mean by the transposition. It can be as you read it. I do want to keep the sense of uncertainty it creates, wavering between different meanings. I find it fascinating how the mind moves between knowing, needing to know, trying to hold onto things, and letting go. With the "missing boat", it could also be a play on "missing the boat", about lost opportunity. I have an image of all these missed boats floating on our lives! We want to have and hold and get ahead. Perhaps it's good to miss a few boats!

Hi Cam! Good to see you! I did try your suggestion, lived with it for a few days. It changed the poem in a way I didn't feel made it better. It changed the shape, the contours, of the dreaming mind that is 'thinking' (not the right word) the poem. Nemo used the word 'topography', which is just how I see it. The way, or the drift, or the style of a consciousness is as concrete as physical geography for me. But I'm glad I tried it your way. And I'm very pleased you like the poem!

Roger, what I said above to Cameron partly answers your sense of the first stanza being too abstract. I don't think a 'thought' in a poem is necessarily 'abstract'. More and more, I remember Virginia Woolf in The Waves: "And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking". I don't intend the opening stanza to be philosophical, but one movement (as in music) or one act (as in a play) in the voice of a thinker, a wool-gatherer. Then there is space, and an image occurs, and then space, and in the third stanza, a musing rises from the image and the cast of mind from the first stanza. This is really hard to explain! ha! But I do take to heart that you find it heavy and too well-worn, and I'm glad you find it well-written. I love how you describe the rest of the poem. I'll live with it a while, and see if cutting the first part adrift from the rest will work.... Thank you! Oh, and the title!! Nemo and John gleaned the idea of the title.

Nemo, yes. The title is double. The will to keep death at a distance, and the willingness to let go.

John, thank you! Yes, the willingness to die, to be "an empty man", is the essence of it. These lines from 'Phoenix' by DH Lawrence have been the touchstone of my whole life:

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change

So yes, it's all about transition, change, which is death.

And John, you've read the movement and order of the stanzas just as I felt them. And your wondering whether it needs MORE is exactly what I posted the poem to find out. It seemed enough for me, and I'm glad to know it's enough for you, too. All I can say is that when I wrote the last stanza, I heard the poem say 'stop now, hands off'. Thank you for understanding!

Phil, I'm happy you enjoyed it! Yes, there's something about the bird bringing news from a distance, and the way we look for evidence, for 'closure'. Aphrodite is mostly thought of as a goddess of love, but she's really a sea goddess, and uses seagulls to send messages when she's off visiting Poseidon. We have a fear of death, but the process of change has a lot to do with love.

Nemo, again. Yes and yes and yes. For me, your reading describes what was happening while I wrote the poem, where it comes from, as John's reading does, too. As above, "are you willing . . . ? That word really does trace the different movements of the poem.

Agent! I hope some of what I've written above gives a little clarity. I didn't want it to be understood in a rational way. It could be a suicide, or an accident, or nothing to do with any of these—it's all of it at once. The doubt is at the heart of it. The fundamental unknowability. And the willingness to live in that state. But as I said to Roger, I'll let the three parts of the poem drift and float around each other for now, and see how it all feels in time.

Thanks for taking the time, everyone! As always, it means a lot to me.

Cally

Hi Cally,

As is often the case for me with your poems, this one had me rereading, and my appreciation of it grew the more I came back to it.

Like Nemo, I see wordplay on "Willing". I also sometimes find myself reading the title as if it were the first word of S1.

At first, like Roger, I wondered about what would happen if you cut S1. With its longer lines, lack of an active verb, more complex language ("complex" may be the wrong word) and more abstract imagery, S1 kind of stands out. That said, I'd miss it if it went. I love the idea of the death's shadow being itself -- it reads paradoxically, but also makes sense. And S2 and 3 don't work as well, for me, without the context of S1.

Still I do continue to wonder about S1. Would it work better with a verb, less abstraction, different lineation etc. Something. But I don't have a clear idea of what.

I do wonder if there might be an alternative to "to the core". Maybe something sea-related? I guess I'm partly wondering that because "to the core" is somewhat of a stock phrase, but also, because I'm not sure how "core", as in image, relates to the rest of the imagery. (Though, I guess, from a Buddhist perspective, something that is empty has no core, no essence/self, though that's maybe a bit of a stretch). Anyway, currently the sea imagery doesn't start until the 4th line, almost half-way through the poem. Then what follows is solid sea (ha!). A salty hint a touch earlier in the poem might be worth thinking about.

I really like the way that S2L2 reads straightforwardly -- missing boats are straightforwardly sea news, after all -- but then, on reaching the less expected, "empty man" I suddenly have the sense that the modifiers of S2 and S3 may have been reversed (Spoonerised?), which has me thinking of "an empty boat / a missing man". An "empty man" can have a negative sense (likewise "missing"), but also a positive one. And the man can be missing because he's empty (of self). The empty man/empty boat association had me thinking the Daoist sage Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) and his parable of the empty boat, which concludes, "If a man could succeed in making himself empty and, in that way, wander through the world, then who could do him harm?”.

Another small thought. Perhaps "look" in the last line could be "comb"? As in beachcombing. (Though maybe the beachcombing connection wouldn't come across?) It has alliteration. And is suggestive of a finer, more thorough, search -- though that may not be what you want.


best,

Matt

Matt,

Sorry for the delay (busy days of grandmothering!)

First, the greatest thing a poem can hope for is to be re-read, and grow in the reader's mind from the experience.

I appreciate how you've thought through S1. I, too, think it's necessary, but nothing is settled. I intend to try your suggestions in the coming weeks. If something sparks, I'll post a revision. I'll ponder "to the core", too.

I was thrilled to the core (ha!) when I read the parable you linked. WOW. I've never read it! How did this one slip by me?! It's perfect for this poem. It is the way I intended the "empty man" to be read. But I also want some play in the image, some freedom for interpretation. I always want that freedom. For me, it's always the hardest balance to strike—between play and exactness.

I thought about 'comb', and settled on "look" because it's doubly alliterative—'look' and 'clue' have an L and K sound, and 'look' sounds like water welling around rock pools to me. And again, "look" leaves more play in the image; 'comb' has a specificity I want to avoid.

Thanks so much, Matt! I won't forget the empty boat story. So good!

Cally

Hi Cally,

I've read this a dozen or so times since you posted it; I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to muster a response. I haven't delved into others' comments much or your responses to them. I enjoyed the poem, which reminded me quite a lot of some of Jane Hirshfield's poems. There, too, there is almost untenable abstraction that then finds its home in a precise correlative. That very careful handling of abstraction is a rare thing to come across.

If I were to report my feelings during the temporality of reading -- so, as I come across each line and strophe -- I'd say the poem is going to have to do some hard work to win me back after the first four lines -- due to that abstraction, due to some familiarity with a heart 'dark to the core'. But the rest of the poem does indeed do so.

I seem to remember this poem differently lineated, but the post doesn't register having been edited -- so perhaps it's my faulty memory. I remembered the first four lines as two couplets. I prefer the careful pacing of that.

The parenthetical 'which is itself' feels pedantic at first, but I felt it to be insightful and exact with further readings.

The sort-of-hypallage that happens with the empty man / missing boat arrives at the right time as a destabilising move.

The title suggests to me a double entendre of both willing death away and being willing to court and accept it.

So yeah -- nothing particularly helpful in this comment, but I thought I'd add my voice and appreciation of the poem.

Thanks for the read.