levelheaded: Nantucket

Two options presented themselves to us when reading Jenny Williamson’s “Nantucket.” One is to read it through the inevitable prism of Moby Dick, as we would any modern literary piece titled after the famous island of the whaling industry. The other possible reading is, well, to entirely avoid Moby Dick and read the poem only through what’s in it.

Option #1 is a journey through this particular piece of American history (and literary history). The speaker says their children were named “Coffin,” inevitably invoking Queequeg’s coffin, a symbol of death, but of course also a symbol of life out of death, a life saved, a life survived. We’ll note the far-fetched option this refers to this Coffin but leave it at that. We’ll continue through to find “the catch of the day,” here emphasized not as the winning prize but rather that which cannot be put “back in the ocean” – a sense of regret, guilt. We would end up with a nostalgic look at the “barnacled whales” that were chased away, knowing “We can’t bring them back.” Through this reading, this line would say we can’t bring back the era, just as we can’t bring back literary grandness.

This reading is mostly uninspiring. Nothing of Moby Dick is explicitly in the poem, and whether this was the intended allusion or not has little to do with the poem’s experience as read by eyes focused on content that’s actually on the page. In general, the less we rely on preconceived notions, the better justice we do a poem, and the more sharp a reading experience we will have. Without further ado, let’s try Option #2.

From the get go, we’re asked to pay attention to line breaks, and to construct a certain human condition while also constructing a physical reality. The first sentence, “There is nowhere to hide / on this island,” broken where it is, gives us a sense of entrapment right before attributing this symbolic vulnerability to the island. As we’ll continue to see, the island will become a geography upon which the struggle of the speaker (the “we” that drives the poem) manifests itself.

In two other sentences an image of the island precedes a line break which then reveals internal strife: “Not from the sea; it walks its salt blue” (island) “ / right down the gape of our throat” (speaker), and, “placed driftwood skeletons” (creations of the island) “ / in all of our children” (creations of the speaker). In both cases we observe imagery from the water or the beach, followed by personal implications. The children are all “Coffin.” The daughters are widows. Grief is in “every seam” as if to say the sailors (the sons) carry it in their sails as they do the only work possible in this particular Nantucket.

What then would the final lines stand for in this reading? The speaker concludes, “We can’t bring them back. / We can’t bring anyone back.” The sons given to the sea. The whales chased away. Quite simply this could mean death cannot be reversed. We cannot un-act an action, or reverse any process from our personal or collective history. Worse, we remember this predicament at all times, so much so that it’s the end of every thought process. We can’t bring anyone back and that’s that. That’s how everything (and the poem) ends.

Reading back, we remember there was a positive setup to the poem, a sentimental beginning to life on the island, as in “We made our home here” and we “Raised them right” (the children, that is). So something did work, at first. The island itself, in the form of driftwood, formed the skeletons of the children. In this light, reading the final couplet makes us wonder: is it the sense of home and the intertwined relationship between nature and human life that cannot be brought back? Is it the paradox of catching the “catch of the day” as food to sustain life, which itself ends the life of that which was caught? The transition from “We can’t bring them back” to “We can’t bring anyone back” tells us the poem lets go of its own skeleton, and expands in the last moment to say something all-encompassing about irreversibility.

Strongest is the impression of these simple natural elements – the island, the salt, the driftwood, the net – as building blocks for the speaker’s existential struggle. The imagery is clean, and unless you insist on reading into it (here’s another one: 14 lines – anyone wants to argue a sonnet?), the poem creates a simple yet awe-inspiring snapshot. Something like this.

– The Editors