Oceanic

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Poetry, both old and new, not only reveals the oceans’ uncanny beauty, it also frames the monstrous dilemmas of rising seas, pollution, and declining biodiversity. A metaphor - put simply - is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable - we typically use it by describing one object or person as another thing entirely rather than like. Ponder the profound connection between life’s fragility and the eternal vastness of the ocean with these verses that weave a captivating tapestry of emotions. “Crossing the Bar” by Lord Tennyson Alfred

In “Secrets of the Sea,” Assan provides commentary on the Syrian refugee crisis. The poem is for Alan Kurdi , a three-year-old Syrian boy whose name made global headlines in 2015 after he drowned in the mediterranean sea, but it is also for all the other refugees that lost their lives. Assan says Kurdi’s name changed the world, while others’ names remain “secrets of the sea.” Reading is tidal, and each tide brings with it new associations. It is difficult now to read John Masefield’s Sea-Fever without thinking of bleaching coral, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner without picturing Chris Jordan’s photographs of dead albatross, their stomachs full of brightly coloured plastic. “‘ Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” but avian flu is decimating seabird populations. Engraving on cloth. Frame: 28 in x 37 in; 71.1 cm x 94 cm; Image: 13 1/2 in x 22 1/2 in; 34.3 cm x 57.1 cm. AC EDM 2003.179. Throughout Oceanic, Nezhukumatathil upends conventional notions of both what power looks like and what safety means. For her, the natural forces human beings have long regarded as dangerous—tigers, snakes, lava—can be sources not just of power but also of safety.” — Georgia ReviewDesire is also the main current of The European Eel, Steve Ely’s lush recreation of the incredible transatlantic migration eels undertake to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Little is known about their ocean-going lives, but in Ely’s telling it becomes a testimony to life’s irrepressibility. A female eel will gradually consume her own body to fuel the journey, “reducing herself to the seed of her species’ future”. It culminates in an ecstatic account of eel sex, coiling in billowing clouds of golden milt and ova, “sparks from the cornucopian flame / of Archaea’s unkillable, dark pleroma”. This word mat of under-the-sea adjectives will be a perfect complement to this resource, helping to build a broader range of vocabulary. Unlike W. B. Yeats in ‘Lapis Lazuli’, where the poet sees the robustness of civilisation embodied by the rebuilding of culture and societies over different historical periods, Housman emphasises the ultimate futility of building empires or making anything. Set sail on a poetic odyssey where the vast expanse of the ocean becomes a metaphor for the journey of life. In each case, the form finds the poem’s content—and vice versa—with such ease and grace that one almost wonders how poems concerning the end of summer (“End-of-Summer Haibun”) or separation from a child (“Travel Mommy Ghazal”) ever found other shapes to begin with.

Whether you’re on the hunt for a spark of creativity, a tranquil refuge, or simply yearning for a more profound bond with Mother Nature, rest assured. The first of the five sections of ‘The Dry Salvages’ is especially worth reading for its comparative analysis of the river and the sea. The ‘strong brown’ river is the Mississippi, which is ‘untamed and intractable’, and has served as a frontier and as a conduit for commerce. But unlike the river, which is within us, the sea is all about us. The river is a ‘god’, but the sea has ‘many gods’ and ‘many voices’: a polytheistic force of nature.Reading Nezhukumatathil’s poems is a practice in keenly observing life’s details. The poet writes with a romantic sensibility about a world saturated with a deep sense of loss. Recommended for all poetry readers, especially those interested in ecopoetry.” — Library Journal The ocean is largely mysterious. On the ocean’s surface, we ride in boats and relax on beaches to watch the waves crash against the shore.

In such moments, Nezhukumatathil unabashedly embraces the –ic of her collection’s title and insists that “oceanic,” properly understood, far surpasses a definition as “of or relating to the ocean.” Invoking the “boundless” and the “limitless,” Nezhukumatathil sets out a simple, yet profound, argument about our relations with the natural world: the more we feel the ocean’s embrace, the sooner we sense its particular “hum” everywhere.This act of “glancing down” resonates in powerful consequences. The final lines of “Invitation” offer a question—“Who knows what will happen next?”—that also presents a significant opportunity. What happens next, it turns out, is not only the possibility of a different perception of the sea but also the potential for sensing the world itself entirely and radically anew: