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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FOUR MATRICES: 4. THE SEA, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: Screw-gumption despite cold rain and clouds drifting below treetops
Last Line: Rowboats sunk in fifty fathoms. After drifting the oceans for years.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean
First Line: Screw-gumption despite cold rain and clouds drifting below treetops
Last Line: Rowboats sunk in fifty fathoms. After drifting the oceans for years.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Sea; Ocean
Screw-gumption despite cold rain and clouds drifting below treetops.
Poor thing, strung up by false & falser delights; not lost,
a word that weighs nothing except lost to one's self, floating.
How light these imagined loves, floating too, from the head
in a night's sleep when the body's heat is nonmental.
It's a happy mage that walks through the world with his eyes
earthward using clouds only for a pick-me-up. The brain's not
a solid thing he thinks eating calf's brains. But butchers
are solid people. Somewhere between butcher and that unstable
weight is ballad, some song, though not moving to our obvious
harmonies. Count those waterbirds and beware, costumed as women;
part air and part water. But we are drawn to them as clumsy
rowboats sunk in fifty fathoms. After drifting the oceans for years.
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
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HALL OF OCEAN LIFE by JOHN HOLLANDER
JULY FOURTH BY THE OCEAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS
BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS
CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS
THE FIGUREHEAD by LEONIE ADAMS
THE IDEA OF BALANCE IS TO BE FOUND IN HERONS AND LOONS by JAMES HARRISON