• Review Archives
  • Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
  • Story Sundays
  • Charting Children’s Literature
  • Reading Challenges & Projects
  • Review Policy + Contact Form

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

~ Ruminations, reviews and recipes all cooked in a literary cauldron: al(most always) book reviews, all the time.

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

Tag Archives: The Sea Never Says It Loves You

“The Sea Never Says It Loves You” – Fran Wilde

03 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by Shivanee @ Novel Niche in Other Kinds of Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Speculative Poetry Reader, Fran Wilde, Other Kinds of Men, The Sea Never Says It Loves You

8332011781_c1fe30a88e_h

Image: The dark and destructive deep blue sea, posted at Flickr by Michael Greenhill under a Creative Commons License.

Marriages between humans and the natural world are how we make sense of the ungovernable loves within us. I understand how people can yearn to pledge their troth to giant sequoia, and I feel deeply for would-be selkie children who must be dragged, blue-fingered and yawping with need, from the sea.

Fran Wilde’s “The Sea Never Says It Loves You” gives us a human-ocean relationship that begins as a high school romance. This kind of anthropomorphism isn’t new to speculative writing, and Wilde layers the world of the poem, in which sea and mate court, procreate and share a life, with a bittersweet kind of indulgence. Notice the prevailing tense here is conditional: the poet isn’t telling us this is a definite life, but frames a world of sargasso and Sunday night drive-ins, where an exceptional kind of love is possible… not without cost.

Sometimes, Little Mermaid-esque, the price you pay for incredible beauty is utter silence. In the final stanza of the poem, the object of the sea’s affection finds themselves stranded on the shore of a lifelong quietude: “And you are bathed in salt spray, wishing. / Wishing you were water, / or that the sea would whisper from a shell the name of the first song / you danced to / Or say the name it gave you before it swallowed you up.” 

Writing that often seems to reach for the most arcane, the most removed of speculative concepts, often tunnels deepest inward: this is what Wilde’s poem does. We might not all be able to conceive of the sea loving us, or of bearing its “fish-pale, seaweed-haired shell”. But surely we know more than we’re willing to admit, of the silences we’ve bartered in the names of a giant, toppling want. Surely that’s what it means, to sink or swim.

Read “The Sea Never Says It Loves You” here.
Fran Wilde’s most recent novel, Horizon, was published in 2017 by Tor Books.

bon voyage.jpgThis is the third installment of Other Kinds of Men, a speculative poetry reader in honour of Ursula K. Le Guin. Speculative writing, which encompasses the major genres of mythology, fantasy and science fiction, has often given voice to the most relentless and ungovernable urgencies of this age, and any other. Le Guin understood this: that to write about dragons, ice worlds and other seeming oddities was, in fact, to write into the messy, riotous complexity of ourselves. Here’s to dragons, and here’s to Ursula.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sheaves upon sheaves of novel musings straight to your mail!

Join 331 other followers

Novel Niche is Social!

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Goodreads

The Eternal TBR

Popular Perusals

  • "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
    "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
  • A Week in Walcott • "The Spoiler's Return"
    A Week in Walcott • "The Spoiler's Return"
  • "My Brother My Wound" - Natalie Diaz
    "My Brother My Wound" - Natalie Diaz
  • "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
    "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
  • Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
    Duane Allicock's Thoughts on The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng
  • "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar" - Danez Smith
    "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar" - Danez Smith
  • "Ode to Northern Alberta" - Billy-Ray Belcourt
    "Ode to Northern Alberta" - Billy-Ray Belcourt
  • 6. Out on Main Street by Shani Mootoo
    6. Out on Main Street by Shani Mootoo
  • "Portrait of a Diasporican Friend" - Ana Portnoy Brimmer
    "Portrait of a Diasporican Friend" - Ana Portnoy Brimmer
  • "Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls" - Chen Chen
    "Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls" - Chen Chen

Currently Reading

Just Finished…

What S/H/(W)e Said

  • Revolutionary Mothering in Novel Niche - PM Press on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • Almah LaVon Rice-Faina on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • thecornocopiaallotment on “All Hallows” – Louise Glück
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • “Mirror, Reflect Our Unknown Selves” – Tlotlo Tsamaase | Novel Niche: A Place for Books on “Daphne” – Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “Can You Speak English?” – Natalie Wee
  • Steve @poetrykoan on “La Brea” – Andre Bagoo

Twitter Updates

  • 🙏🏽 🌺 🙏🏽 twitter.com/Maia_Elsner/st… 21 hours ago
  • Hard copy or hard no. twitter.com/NoreenMasud/st… 1 day ago
  • RT @paperbasedbooks: “Words are your business, boy. Not just the word. Words are everything. The key to the rock, the answer to the questio… 2 days ago
  • Squad! *rolls out in thigh high facekickers and assless chaps* twitter.com/XoeSazzle/stat… 4 days ago
  • The fucktriarchy, my child. *sharpens oyster knife* twitter.com/DeoWatti/statu… 4 days ago

New at Novel Niche

  • Dearly Departed: A Conversation with Anu Lakhan
  • “The Whistler” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “The Fish” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “Wild Geese” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “How to Fix a Dancer When it Breaks” – Genevieve DeGuzman

Categories

  • A Week in Walcott (7)
  • Bookends (24)
    • Author Interviews and Features (3)
    • Bocas Lit Fest (5)
    • Guest Blogs (2)
    • Literary Events (1)
    • Literary Letters (1)
    • Novel Gift Exchanges (4)
    • Reading Ruminations (2)
    • Yourself In Books (2)
  • Charting Children's Literature (4)
  • Give Feral Thanks – A Mary Oliver Primer (3)
  • Guest Reviews (6)
  • Here for the Unicorn Blood (29)
  • Miscellanities (1)
  • NetGalley (2)
  • Other Kinds of Men (26)
  • Puncheon and Vetiver (31)
  • Reading Challenges (11)
    • British Book Challenge 2011 (4)
    • Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 (5)
  • Requested Reviews (4)
  • Reviews 2010 (9)
  • Reviews 2011 (16)
  • Reviews 2012 (17)
  • Reviews 2013 (3)
  • Reviews 2014 (3)
  • Reviews 2016 (1)
  • Story by Story Reading (1)
  • Story Sundays (14)
  • Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section (8)

Archives

Novel Niche's Eighth Anniversary!April 23, 2018

Tagnificent!

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth Alexandra Fuller Andre Bagoo A Queer POC Poetry Reader A Speculative Poetry Reader A Week in Walcott Bocas Lit Fest 2012 Bocas Lit Fest 2013 Brandon O'Brien British Book Challenge 2011 Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 Carol Shields Catherynne M. Valente Charting Children's Literature Chatto & Windus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chronicle Books Cormac McCarthy Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné Derek Walcott Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight Feature/Interview Fiction Fruit of the Lemon Give Feral Thanks Gregory Maguire Guest Review Half of a Yellow Sun HarperCollins Here for the Unicorn Blood Is Just a Movie Jason McIntyre K. Jared Hosein Karen Lord Lisa Allen-Agostini Littletown Secrets Loretta Collins Klobah Mary Oliver Memoir Midnight in Your Arms Monique Roffey Morgan Kelly NaPoWriMo NetGalley Non-Fiction Novel Novel Gifts Olive Senior Other Kinds of Men Peepal Tree Press Picador Poetry Potbake Productions Puncheon and Vetiver Rajiv Mohabir Reading Ruminations Requested Review Review Rosamond S. King Shani Mootoo Shara McCallum Sherman Alexie Short Story Collection Simon & Schuster Sonia Farmer Stephen King Story Sunday The Allen Prize for Young Writers The Road Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section Unless Vintage/Anchor Books Vintage Books Xiaolu Guo Yourself in Books

Header, divider and button images created by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné.

Creative Commons License
This work by Shivanee Ramlochan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    %d bloggers like this: