For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.
We return to the water today with guest blogger and Maryland-based poet Pat Valdata.
Pat Valdata |
Sea Fever,
Spring Fever
I can’t
remember a time when I didn’t like the ocean, and boating, even though the only
boat ride I took as a child was the Circle Line’s sedate cruise around
Manhattan. Something about traveling on the water appealed to my child’s mind
for reasons I couldn’t fathom (pun intended!). Then, when I was in sixth grade,
I discovered John
Masefield’s “Sea Fever”:
I must go down to the seas again, to the
lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star
to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song
and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a
grey dawn breaking,
I must go down to the seas again, for the
call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may
not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the
white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the
vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way
where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a
laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when
the long trick’s over.
Between the
alliteration and the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, I could
hear the rhythm of pitch and roll in every line. This was the first poem to
give me the “aha!” moment of hearing how the sounds represented the sense. I
loved to recite: “To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a
whetted knife….” Say them out loud—isn’t it a fun line to speak? I loved then,
and still love, how the wavy smoothness of “the gull’s way and the whale’s way
where” transitions into a sudden punch of frigid wind “like a whetted knife.”
I had always
enjoyed reading poetry, from Mother Goose to A Child’s Garden of Verses. [Previous Source Poem posts about A Child's Garden of Verses include "The Land of Counterpane" and "Rain."]
But “Sea Fever” was the first poem that
piqued my interest in craft, not that I could have expressed it just that way
when I was in sixth grade. By the time I took literature classes in high
school, though, I was seriously interested in matters of craft, although my own
poetry consisted of overwritten, angst-filled creepy lines meant to channel
Edgar Allan Poe, or short, pithy verses that I thought were as sophisticated as
anything written by Dorothy Parker.
And then I read
an untitled poem by
E.E. Cummings and was fascinated by the poem’s appearance on the page; by
sounds like “Just/mud-luscious”; by his trick of writing “eddieandbill” and
“bettyandisbel” to visually show the closeness of the two pairs of children who
are inseparable at play; and by the mysterious “balloonMan” whose
goat-footedness led me to the encyclopedia to learn more about Pan, who is the
perfect mythological character to represent springtime, fertility, and
eddieandisbel’s & billandbetty’s foreshadowed sexuality.
Cumming’s
poetry, which was avant garde when he wrote it, still seemed hip and fresh when
I first encountered it in high school (okay, so it was a long time ago). Then
it seemed the very opposite of Masefield to me, and it led me into the world of
free verse poetry. But now I see how similar the two poems are in their
treatment of sound effects; how Cummings, in his use of typography and
repetition, is also paying close attention to rhythm; and how both poems
celebrate the irresistible wildness of nature that draws me outdoors in
just-spring and to the ocean (or at least the Chesapeake Bay) every chance I
get.
__________________________________________________
Surf
By Pat Valdata
On the anniversary of your dying alone
I stood on the hard-packed shoreline,
back turned toward the insistent wind.
I picked up a clamshell covered in spume,
ridges smoothed by the tumble to shore.
In the heavy, polished, concave core
I ground sand grains under my thumb.
A gust pushed me three steps closer
to the hiss of spray, the retreating
surf,
where wave after wave thrummed ashore,
pushed by last night’s thunderstorm.
I tasted a filigree of freezing foam.
Salt on my fingertips. Too much like
tears.
A note about
this poem: “Surf” isn’t a new poem. It won the Eastern Shore Regional Poetry
Competition in 2006. But it is representative of the “semiformal” way I often
write now, paying attention to rhythm and mixing rhyme and off-rhyme, and in
doing so, acknowledging the influence of poets like Masefield, Cummings, and
many others.
John Masefield, painting by William Strang Source: The Telegraph |
Pat Valdata is poet and novelist whose most recent
book is Inherent Vice, a book of
poetry published
by Pecan Grove Press in 2011, the same publisher that printed her poetry
chapbook Looking for Bivalve, which was a contest finalist in 2002. Pat has twice received Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland
State Arts Council for her poetry. In 2013 she was awarded a grant from the Mid
Atlantic Arts Foundation for a residency at the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts. Thanks to this grant and residency, she completed the manuscript
for a forthcoming book of poetry that was awarded the 2015 Donald Justice
Prize. Pat lives in Elkton and works at the West Chester University Poetry Center.
Previous posts in this series:
Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan
J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)
Diane Mayr on a haiku by Basho
Jone MacCulloch on "We Are Waiting (a pantoum)" by Joyce Sidman
Mary Bargteil on Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Jacqueline Jules on "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
Pamela Murray Winters on "The Land of Counterpane" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dennis Kirschbaum on "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Janet Fagal on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats
Janet Fagal on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats
Linda Baie on "The Way It Is" by William Stafford
3 comments:
"Surf" is gorgeous.
I tasted a filigree of freezing foam.
Nice...
I only 'get' to visit the ocean, often wonder how I'd be if I had ever lived near enough to experience it all the time. I like hearing your journey of remembering the Sea Fever poem, in awe of its sound. Makes me wonder if more young people would be taken in if more rhythm was shared. And then your poem, like Diane, I love the filigree line, but also "I ground sand grains under my thumb." brings me there. Thank you!
If you read my post you saw how Sea Fever was a part of of my childhood. It was a treasured poem and still is. "Surf" is one I relate to almost intimately . I love your use of the waves thrumming. It is the pull of the water and its beauty and power that brings me there on almost every trip "home" to visit family. The ocean seems a part of me and is the perfect place for remembering.
Janet F.
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