I recently started reading The Whaleboat House (also known as Amagansett) by Mark Mills. The book starts with a beautiful poem (“From Montauk Point”) by Walt Whitman:
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps–that inbound urge and urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.
I love the way that poetry, and perhaps particularly Walt Whitman, can make me feel something I already knew but feel it in a more profound way. The waves, constantly seeking the shore, are things that I’ve always known but now I know better and more deeply.
The vocabulary of this poem is exquisite. The poem is in constant motion via the gerunds: absorbing, viewing, tossing, curling, seeking. I like the nature images: eagle, beak, sea, waves, wild, snowy, caps, shores. It is interesting to note that the only man-made object in the poem is the ships. The ships in the distance stand in direct contrast with the mighty eagle’s beak.
In fact, the poem seems to center around a contrast of the height of the eagle and the lower level of the sea. The eagle, with it’s unmatched view of the world below, can take it all on and see the big picture, the pulsing and seeking of the waves. The location of the eagle’s height is enhanced by the religious imagery evoked by “Eastward” and by the imagery of mountains evoked by “caps.” The ships, in contrast, are tossed with waves, down in the foam. The poet, here, has a special view that allows him to see the world from a different perspective than the mortals down in the ship.
I’ll stand with Whitman up on the eagle’s beak as often as I can.
Buy Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
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