Thanks for this Peter, it's beautiful. I love the rocking tidal movement of the sentences through the lines, and the looser rhythms of that first stanza. Do you think that the syntax and metrics there are actually in conflict with the idea, that all is calm and pure "there," and as such suggestive of the speaker's rather more disordered state, wishing for a purity or innocence that's forever out of reach? Do I just have a dirty mind, to hear echoes perhaps of the speaker's obsession in phrases like "in and out," "going down deep," and maybe even the barrels "banged ashore," though that last may be a stretch? Works for me, and I love it.
Funny, this may be one of the first ESVM poems I've cared much for; she oftens smells a little musty to me.
Chris
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