Vox Populi
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Alfred Corn: Naskeag
Once a day the rocks, with little warning—
not much looked for even by the spruce
and fir ever at attention above—
fetch up on these tidal flats and bars.
Large crate-like rocks, wrapped in kelp;
layer on imprinted layer,
umber to claret to olivegreen
of scalloped marbling. . . .
Not far along the path of obstacles
and stepping stones considered,
fluid skeins of bladder wrack
lie tufted over the mussel shoals—
the seabed black as a shag’s neck,
a half-acre coalfield, but alive.
Recklessly multiple, myriads compact,
the small airtight coffers (in chipped enamel)
are starred over with bonelike barnacles
that crackle and simmer throughout the trek,
gravel-crepitant underfoot.
Evening comes now not with the Evening
Star, but with a breathing fog.
And fog is the element here,
a new term, vast by indefinition,
a vagrant damping of the deep tones
of skies and bars and sea.
Sand, mud, sand, rock; one jagged pool
basining a water invisible
except as quick trembles
over algal weed—itself
half-absent, a virid gel.
Walking means to lose the way
in fog, the eye drawn out to a farther point,
a dark graph on the faint blue inlet watershine;
out to where a heron stands,
stationing its sharp silhouette
against the fogbright dusk.
Then, not to be approached,
lifts off and rows upward, up, up,
a flexible embracing-forward on the air,
rising out of view
behind an opaque expanse of calcium flame.
The great kelp-dripping rocks,
at random positions,
lost in thought and dematerializing
with the gray hour,
release, indelibly, their pent-up contents.
—Even the scattered feathers here
are petrified, limewhite blades and stony down.
The sky, from eastward, deepens
with the dawning insight
as the seas begin to rise, the flats
slide away, the hulls bear off the ground,
and the eye alien to so self-sufficing
a tidal system turns and takes up how to
retrace the steps that brought it there.
~~~
Alfred Corn is an esteemed American poet and essayist who has received many honors including an Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. The Returns: Collected Poems by Alfred Corn is available from Press 53.
~~~
Poem copyright © 1999 Alfred Corn. From Stake: Selected Poems 1972-1992 by Alfred Corn (Counterpoint, 1999). Used with permission of the author.
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Oh, the music in these lines! I adore these especially:
“luid skeins of bladder wrack
lie tufted over the mussel shoals—
the seabed black as a shag’s neck,
a half-acre coalfield, but alive.
Recklessly multiple, myriads compact..”
Just lovely.
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I agree, Meg. The music of the language imitates the crash of the waves on the rocks.
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This peom – for me – conjures up the northern Dutch and German coastline along the violent North Sea. Every line consists of words I would like to ‘masticate’ in my head…
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As close to Bishop’s “famous eye” as it gets!
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Such a pleasure to arrive on an electronic gadget in the morning to words that evoke memories of other years and then to know others share your joy while adding their own poetry to the comments.
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It is the great honor of my life to bring poetry and ideas to people who appreciate them.
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Brilliant comments here from others on this poem, which I love for its subject, along with his verbal mastery as Corn describes connections with the ocean, its fogs and edges. I read a book of Alfred’s decades ago, and this brings back memories of how strong his language is, with the intricate rhythms, unusual images, always a word to look up in the dictionary. I thank him for that, btw.
It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s poem the Dry Salvages, one of his Four Quartets. But Naskeag surges to its own music. One that us landlocked loons of the North have so little contact with.
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Off I go to re-read Eliot’s “Dry Salvages”. Thanks for that homework, Jim.
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Alfred beautifully captures the rough edge of the North Atlantic shore.
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Sometimes it’s at the edges or boundaries where the most interesting “intermingles” occur. The poem catches that. It also reminds me of once standing on such a rocky shore in the Aran Islands, pretending to be an Irish poet gathering the place in. But even with similar geology, or even weather, the history was different: the coffin ships, the Irish diaspora, the facing west, and the different languages built against that other rocky shore. The scene or even the smell might be similar, but the mythos of a place helps lead a poet to a different set of terms. Naskeag as a unique place (and poem) in many ways, universal in others.
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I remember being on the high cliffs of Moher looking west toward America, an epic view very different than the low rocky shore of Naskeag Island. I wonder how Alfred might describe that other seascape. Brilliantly, I’m sure.
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Formidable powers of description spoken in dense, concrete language that suits the rough, rocky, and liminal “fog bright dusk” where the “seabed” is “black as a shag’s neck,/a half acre coalfield but alive.” Even the “rocks, lost in thought, and dematerializing/ with the gray hour/ release indelibly their pent-up contents.”
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Perfectly said, Mary. Thank you.
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What superb travel of tongue and eye that reads and rereads to the delight of all conscience. I’ve said to Alfred he is a great custodian of our literary heritage and I invite the daily readers of this site to apprehend his most recent selected and new: “The Returns” to begin imbibing the lovely record of this master’s life in verse. Those Writings of his earlier life in Manhattan pose like a lovely, extended and lived-in anecdotal “stateside” version of Eliot’s great poem “Preludes” and here today in counterpoint to things urbane, this numinous and phenomenal evocation of “Capital N” nature!—As lovely a poem as ever posted on this site! Alfred just by chance, reads here today 11 AM at our church’s final Advent Poetry and Organ Concert, having flown in from Providence on Tuesday. We can hardly wait!
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Well-said, Sean. Alfred Corn is a national treasure. I love this poem, a masterpiece of description. We are lucky to have him among us.
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Thank you for that, Sean — I, too, love his work. I find, sometimes, that there are such perfect poems inside his poems! Like this, for example:
Evening comes now not with the Evening
Star, but with a breathing fog.
And fog is the element here,
a new term, vast by indefinition,
a vagrant damping of the deep tones
of skies and bars and sea.
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Lovely poem within the poem, Laure-Anne. Thank you.
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So beautifully painterly, drawn by a master wordsmith…
even as in such brief images as “And fog is the element here,/a new term, vast by indefinition,” the unseen and the seen blend and mesh…
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Spot on, Margo!
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