Isle Of White Sailing
Love Poem / Read and analyze / VERY CONFUSING?
Drunk with pines and long kisses
like summer i steer the fast sail of the rose
bent toward the death of the thin day
stuck into my solid marine madness
Pale and lashed to my ravenous water,
I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate
still dressed in gray and bitter sounds
and a sad crest of abandoned spray
Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,
lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,
becalmed in the throat of the fortunate isles
that are white and sweet as cool hips
In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles
charges to insanity with electrict currents,
heroically divided into dreams
and intoxicating roses practicing on me.
Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,
You parallel body yields to my arms
like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,
quid and slow, in the energy under the sky
Good luck analyzing , Try to find the meaning / purpose / literary devices. Figurative language.
Here’s my reading of the poem … a little different from Kevin S’s.
I think the key to reading this poem is in the contrast between the “I” (the speaker who is in passionate love) and the object of his love (the woman). Or no — a contrast between DESIRING and being WITH THE LOVED ONE.
The first four stanzas all describe the speaker’s DESIRE (when he’s NOT WITH the woman he loves and wants to be with her.) The liens describe him as desperate, fevered, very much goal-directed. He’s like a tiny ship at sea in the storms of his passion, just trying to make it through the day to when he came be reunited with the woman he loves.
He’s drunk, at sea, bent towards the “death of the day” – killing time till he can be with her – “gray and bitter” – feeling tossed, sad, abandoned. He’s hardened by passion. It’s like all his life has become a single wave – a cruel wave carrying him forward.
And – get ready for the big turnaround! – the experience of being with the loved one is totally different. “White and sweet as cool hips” … “quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.”
In other words, the poem breaks between the type of cruel intensity of the DESIRING stanzas (when he’s separated from the lady). At those times, passion seems like a storm that lashes and traps him.
Contrast those to the “with her” stanzas (maybe 4, definitely 6) when the tone, the experience shifts to something strange and mysterious but much calmer and more fluid.
It’s almost like desire is like being on the surface of a stormy ocean and LOVE is like being undersea – strange and mysterious, a completely different world, a completely different time and energy frame.
That’s my reading. See if it works for you. If you like it, you can figure out all that schoolboy stuff on your own.
Sailing Gosport to Poole via Isle of Wight
Themocracy