Emilio Tarsa

Apr 10, 2022

Hi Martin: you asked me to read your poems, so here I am. I must add that I was most moved and intrigued by the first poem, so I’ll focus on that one.

I am attracted to the images evoking the ephemeral, the fragmentary, inbetween-ness and so on.

I am not sure, then, what to make of the second line in the second stanza because it is ‘transparent’, whereas the second lines in the stanzas preceding and succeeding the second stanza are in some ways evocative of the numinous or, if this is too much, the ineffable or obscure regions of experience. (The never graspable horizon where wave and twilight meet, fragments, and so on.)

Yet, the second line in the fourth stanza communicates a straightforward longing, thus paralleling the second line in the second stanza; just as the second lines in the other stanzas parallel one another in their evocations of dark (as in obscure), and therefore less straightforward, experience.

On the one hand, the alternating pattern and parallelism do evoke the coming and going of waves–the natural ebbing and flowing of water is a master image in that “waves” and “tide” frame the poem, respectively, and, of course, “waves” is in the title. So, form here follows function effectively.

On the other hand, I simply have a preference for engagements with numinous experience! On this note, the evocations of the numinous ultimately “wins out” because of the final line: in terms of content, font, and style; it is of a piece with the two second lines alluding to obscurity, as opposed to the direct expression of a longing in the other two second lines.

But what does it all mean? Hmmmm…

Romantic attachment and physical (as in bodily closeness, not necessarily or only sexual) touch are paramount, as well as sentimental longings (the desire for the beloved’s return and, in terms of physicality, the desire to hold them close.)

But then there’s the alternating lines evoking experience that cannot really be adequately captured by language…it seems to me that there’s a dialectic between the longing for the beloved and the kinds of experiences that resist legibility. Since obscurity is evoked, I can’t help but think about the Unconscious, which is of course a repository of repressed desires (among other kinds of sentiments and thoughts).

I read this alternating pattern between straightforward longing for the beloved and the ineffable, in one of two ways.

1) In terms of obscurity and the ineffable in the context of romantic-erotic experience, it makes me think about the primal aspect of being in love. That is,

that innate, human part of ourselves that remains uncivilized and uncultured, not subject to language, always-already remaining elusive from its alphabetic nets. Feelings and sensations that are un-verbalizable because they fuse, separate, and disperse in sensorial-images. I think of private erotic experience. Setting aside social decorum as a reason why it’s difficult to speak of such experiences, they’re also difficult to convey because their reality is sensorial and emotional…the pleasure that is had is nearly illegible because language is too limited to express the [illusory] sense of infinitude and expansiveness, to name only two possible sensual experiences triggered by erotic-sexual contact. We can only speak haltingly–in fragments!–in metaphor, because the experience is untranslatable, or at least, not fully translatable or even adequately translatable.

So, in this light, the poem stages a dialectic between straightforward romantic/sentimental longing and its dovetailing, inextricable thread: the primal core that pulsates, feels, greedily hungers, emotionally oscillates from one moment to the next, imagines violence at the thought of the beloved succumbing to another…and so on.

The final line indicates which of the two experiences the speaker privileges.

2) Simply, because being in love is transformative–it triggers, troubles, unleashes–it could be that the speaker is attempting to indicate that though he longs for the beloved in a straightforward way, they are also wanting the surging (waves!) of transformational experience that accompanies love. Put another way, because love necessarily forces one to become unmoored, one is perpetually in an in-between state: questioning, feelings emotions perhaps one thought were long buried, and thus coming into contact with desires and thoughts once concealed in the murky depths of the Unconscious.

So obscurity here is a positive value in itself, meaning it’s pedagogical: the speaker likes being in a mode of experience that is hard to describe and easily capture through words, because of its transformational potential.

In other words, this poem is not so much about the beloved itself, but about the kind of darkly obscure experience that being in love activates. The predominance of this experience–title and final line–support the idea that poem privileges this over the love-longings.

Lastly, the final line is evocative of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, wherein the mermaid princess becomes a bubble after the failed romance with the prince. Is the speaker the prince who has come to recognize what he has lost? I half-jest here, but, yeah: froth, bubbles, waves, thwarted love, all make me think of the fairy tale.

All in all, this is a poem of substance, that resists easy interpretation–not because it’s too dense or lacks art, but because it draws out a novel and compelling relation in a universal, even by now mundane, experience. The depiction of this relation adds depth to what could have been a love poem derivative of the horde of others circulating in the world.

So, good job.

Cheers.

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martinmccarthy1956

Apr 11, 2022

Replying to

Emilio Tarsa

Emilio, thank you. What a thoughtful analysis of a poem! I am very impressed by this. I think that you have highlighted some elements of it that lesser critics might never see or be aware of. So here we are with my poem(s) and your deep analysis of one. I hope other readers will come and read everything, including the other comments – all of which make the craft of writing poetry so worthwhile.

1 Like

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Emilio Tarsa

Apr 11, 2022

Replying to

martinmccarthy1956

Good to hear! Though I write for scholarly publication, my aim is to become a personal essayist. I think about it all the time, fiercely desiring to produce excellent work with signature style and voice. I say this to note that: feedback that takes one’s work seriously, is gratifying and motivates one to keep honing one’s craft. Keep writing!

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martinmccarthy1956

Apr 11, 2022

Replying to

Emilio Tarsa

I love this. Getting encouragement from someone who really understands the nuanced craft of writing is always a special joy.

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Carrie Griffin

Mar 08, 2022

These are astonishing poems, Martin!

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Hannah Dare

Feb 24, 2022

I love the mystery and magic of these poems. Beautiful work, genuine and heartfelt.

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martinmccarthy1956

Feb 25, 2022

Replying to

Hannah Dare

I just want to thank you and the others who commented on my work. I know that a poet, after writing for many years, should be somewhat indifferent to comments (good or bad) but I am not that person, and I do appreciate the positivity of these. As Leonard Cohen once said: ‘And here’s a man still working for your smile.’

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Alessia Troisi

Feb 24, 2022

Beautiful poems with such strong imagery. I have always felt a strong connection to water, and I feel as though both of these poems put into words something I have always felt but have never known how to express. I love the last two lines ‘whenever you come back to me/ on the froth of the tide’ the connection of relationship to the waves is powerful. Craft like this isn’t easy to come on these days!

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billy

Feb 24, 2022

These are beautiful poems, the repeated line running like the tide and the striking language choices. “…feel your skin gleaming with joy” is such a compelling line. It almost shouldn’t work and yet works wonderfully. Is it the skin that that’s joyful? Is it the poet, at feeling the gleaming skin?

I love, too, how the second poem echoes the first, or entrenches it. This is poetry of a high order, I think, full of passion, an obviously erotic tinge and careful crafting. The prospect of a long sequence (Book of Desire – what a title!) continuing these meditations is an intriguing one.

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It was my honour to edit Martin Mc Carthy’s The Book of Desire. While working with him, I got to know Martin as a gentleman, a scholar and an exemplary human being, as well as a poet. This is a book of poetry, so that will be my focus. Still, it doesn’t hurt to know that poets don’t have to invariably be oddballs and cretins!

The Book of Desire is not your run-of-the-mill modern poetry book. All too often modern poetry attempts to avoid praise, and love poetry is a form of praise. Hell, desire itself is a form of praise, if we think about it. With desire we find someone else so attractive as to be irresistible. We praise that special someone with our eyes, with our longing looks, with the reactions of our bodies, and if we are poets not overcome by inhibitions, we praise them with our poems as well.

So why do modern poets, almost by consensus, avoid praise? I think it’s akin to schoolchildren being afraid to wear something that will get them ridiculed: bell bottoms too skinny in the sixties or too flared later, for example.

Poems of praise, poems of love and poems of desire should not be treated like fashion trends, but somehow that’s what happened. Modern poets concluded that things like sentiment, emotionalism and praise were ‘bad’ and would get them ridiculed by their peers, so they copped out.  Not all poets, but the majority.

And yet we human beings are sentimental creatures, we’re emotional creatures, and we like to praise and be praised. Is any of that bad?

I consider myself an exception to the modern poetic rule. Both my published books are books of love poems. One editor told me that she considered me the best contemporary writer of love poems. Another editor modified my bio to say my poems ‘burned on the page’. More than a few readers have said similar things over the years. But, alas, I now have competition in a certain Martin Mc Carthy! But I do have a head start on him, so hopefully it will be like the tortoise and the hare. In any case, the two of us are in a smallish minority, writing poems about love and desire in the 21^st century.

I find Martin’s poetry unique and refreshing for the following reasons:

First, love poetry requires honesty that goes beyond mere flattery. What I see immediately in ‘Nymph’, the The Book of Desire’s opening poem, is such honesty when Martin admits that he’s like a moth drawn to flame, powerless to resist. Just the sight of a girl’s bare arms is enough to incite desire.

Second, poets have to be able to communicate both what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. That’s far easier said than done, or all the world’s bad and mediocre poets would be great. A poet needs the gift of words, and we see that in the book’s second poem, ‘The Sea Beats in You’. It is here that Martin reveals himself as a mystic. Some of my favourite poets were mystics: William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, Sappho, Walt Whitman. The mystics see connections between themselves and the universe that ‘normal’ people don’t. In this splendid poem Martin, his lover, the sea and the moon are all connected, all part of something larger and endlessly mysterious.

I also like the continuity of Martin’s poems in The Book of Desire. The idea of what might be called ‘interconnections within vastness’ is a recurring theme. In many modern poetry collections we have one disconnected idea after another. But here we have poems building toward T. S. Eliot’s ‘overwhelming question’. What are the roles of love and desire in the universe we occupy, so temporarily?

Of course there is no absolute answer. But Martin shows us how it is possible to navigate the ebbing and flowing waters of desire while embracing the Great Mysteries that surround us.

I could go on, because there is so much to like and recommend, but I don’t want to delay you from reading the poems any longer! The Book of Desire is a book well worth diving into.