Pattie McCarthy, extraordinary tides

 

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