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.
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