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