form is content – content
is form – it is the only commandment
but there is no shape to
days
the long border of an
evening intertidal
never resolves itself
never dissolves
never solves for any
variable –
it is simply stretched
beyond recognition
or usefulness – a king of
nothing
& nowhere – but if we
want
process not product –
which we do – then
it will be evening all
season & we will stretch into it (“neap tide – autumn”)
There is something fascinating about the shift in Philadelphia poet Pattie McCarthy’s lyric across her sleek new collection, extraordinary tides (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2023), a book that follows on the heels of her six prior full-length collection, all of which appeared with Berkeley publisher Apogee Press: bk of (h)rs (2002), Verso (2004), Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (2010), Marybones (2013) [see my review of such here], Quiet Book (2016) [see my review of such here] and wifthing (Berkeley CA: Apogee Press, 2021) [see my review of such here]. McCarthy has long been engaged with the book as her unit of composition, composing book-length lyric suites as thematic and structural examinations around language, history, gender, time and lost threads of the histories of women (much of which focused on Medieval women), but there is something quieter and more immediate about this particular poem, something akin to a moment of calm—almost a palate cleanser—as she stands on the shoreline, listens to the water and considers the horizon. “the sky keeps bright / eyes on us – we // look up into the cold / the tide makes,” she writes, as part of the second section, “a friction like / a song in glass // that is the tide sings / while it spins in glass // so deep midwinter the light turns iron / there is no end to your tongue [.]”
Set as a quartet of extended lyrics—“neap tide – autumn,” “[untitled yule tide],” “lent – in extraordinary tide” and “neap tide – spring”—McCarthy’s lines hold a deep meditation across the opening and closing of the winter months, researched and responsive, as is her way, but held across a sequence of moments, from tides through the difference of seasons. “the sky spangled with crows,” the second section offers, “a night body of water // serrated wrack saw wrack toothed wrack / dulse spiraled tidy into // a whole universe [.]”
The space between her words, her lines, through this book-length suite are enormous, and allow for leaps and silence as connective tissue, providing the reader enough space and time to not merely fill in the blanks, but to employ and occupy those silences that are as important as the words themselves. Towards the end of the second section, writing: “I don’t even know what’s good / anymore – I only know // what makes a pause – even / the smallest stop in the relentless // present tense – [.]” One could suggest the poem itself is entirely about perspective, from the perfect blend of form and content to increments of time—from the markers of seasons, religious holidays and the tides themselves—to the very movement of birds, light and water. Given the dates she provides, the first autumn into winter, and winter into spring of pandemic lockdown, one could even see this meditation entirely as a response to a particular kind of Covid-era isolations; a Covid-era book that provides a tone, without a single reference, beyond the dating of each of these quartet-stretches. Or, towards the end of the collection, as she writes:
& I have been inland
a while
the virgin of the dry tree
the tidal shift is not
seamless – even
the neaps mark
circatidal margins
whelks fast during neap
cycles
unknot the fishing rope
to unrestrain
the wind – we were
quizzed on the birds
we made flashcards of all
the trees
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