Abstract
The poems in this collection seek to represent, document, and otherwise account for the polysemous trajectories of one person’s effort to create a life of substance. That such projects are, in nearly all cases, fated to encounter setbacks, losses, and deep personal doubts along the way is axiomatic, as these fates are necessary to the success of both project and life—if any success is to be achieved at all, and assuming that any arbitrary separation of project and life is possible. A port call, indeed sea duty in general, is often a singular, formative event, for good or ill. It shades and informs all future experiences, whether closely or loosely related to the original. These poems, therefore, are arranged not by seasons, or chronology, but by port of call, an arrangement that mimics the way the mind forms lasting connections between experiences and their meanings. However, more than simply to serve as reportage, the poems are intended in many cases to enact their subject, or to become subject themselves, though in response to or arising from prior formative influences. This again mimics the way we experience life as a circuitous, recursive, often vague and suggestive collage, not as a clear, linear narrative. T.S. Eliot reminds us that “what a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed in the course of time a poet may become merely a reader to his own works, forgetting his original meaning—or without forgetting, merely changing.” So it is with the significance of our personal ports of call. The passage of time obscures; our understanding matures along with us; our histories work free of their anchorage. The eclectic nature of these poems, their varied styles, forms, and tones, seeks to avoid the potential monotony one so often finds in collections more thematically or formally unified in their design. This too is how life as we live it comes to us, full of variety, surprise, and difference despite our efforts to impose formal structures upon it to ease our burden and make possible our understanding. Admittedly, this volume imposes a structure on its disparate parts, but one hopes the structure appears organic to the material and unobtrusive to its enjoyment.