Tag Archives: Poetics

Week 12: A Place of Untold History

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There is bond between humanity and nature that is unfortunately unable to be told by either side. It either leads to biased opinions or beliefs from humans, or just information that is simply not able to be processed by humans. Despite this lack of information, there is a way that humanity can connect with all forms of life that have existed since the early formation of the planet, and that is the Ocean. In Derek Walcott’s poem The Sea is History, it tells about significant moments in time as well as scripture and how it is all tied with the environment through the sands, the tides, and the marine life. Now while history as we know it is respected and continues to be so, there is without a doubt history that was undocumented; a perspective from the people that did not have the privilege of writing down information nor accounts from their point of view leading to certain events being forgotten or lost in time.

Connections between the imagery of ships, artifacts, and events in the bible referenced by Walcott are made to showcase the undisclosed chronicles of the people that were traded and shipped overseas to places against their will,

“as the white cowries clustered like manacles
on the drowned women,

and those were the ivory bracelets
of the Song of Solomon,
but the ocean kept turning blank pages” (Line 20-24).

While history can be altered and is subject to change over time with more and more information being revealed by historians, there is no denying that there is truly no way of certifying past events truthfully, but this very statement then leads to the question of what is considered factual history and what is not? If one were to answer this from a colonialist point-of-view, there would be no denying that documented historical accounts are sacrosanct leaving very little room for other perspectives (i.e. opposing views). If this is the universal rule in regards to history, then where does that leave the history that was never written down, the history that was erased, and the information that was not believed to be true? The medium between what is believed to be true and what is believed to be fabrication is the environment and as mentioned by Walcott, “The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History” (Line 3-4). To the countless number of people that have been forgotten in time, to the honorable and the broken, there is no other representation of their troubles and background, other than the environment and whether or not some may not consider it, the history is there in the waters, and it can’t be erased.

Week 4: The poetics of ecological catastrophe

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“Whitman’s pale body, and my own, frolicking in the waves, carry on our skin the guilt and violence of ecological catastrophe. I would like to believe, and sometimes I do believe, that inside the chaos of the surf we can derive succor and some pleasure from the buoyancy that poetry creates. But it is hard not to recall the other creatures who depend upon the ocean, the fish and crabs and microscopic plankton, that will pay a harsher price.(150)”

Every summer, the warnings issued through news sources and splashed in front of empty lifeguard shacks tell beachgoers that a sewage spill has contaminated the water, and thus, swimming is not recommended. And so, like Dickinson, we watch from ashore, the untouchable Silver that beckons us with its waves and dirtied water. At least, this is the issue in the South Bay. Miraculously, the sewage-contaminated waters from the Tijuana River plant do not spread beyond Silver Strand(and occasionally Coronado).

Every year, visitors turn away from the contaminated beaches of the South Bay, and find solace in the pristine white sanded beaches of Solana and La Jolla, conveniently located in some of the most affluent areas of San Diego. 

While Blue Humanities focuses on the poetics of planetary water, I can not in my experience separate my view of the ocean from the politics of land and water. The contamination of the beaches and the surrounding wetlands and waters is a constant feature on my mind. Just as Steve Mentz states, “it is hard not to recall the other creatures who depend upon the ocean, the fish and crabs and microscopic plankton, that will pay a harsher price(150),” I too can not seperate my enjoyment of the beach and ocean, from the total devestation of an unsolved ecological crisis happening a few miles down the coastline. As we turn to our beaches in the summer for pleasure and connection, and the surrounding coastal cities benefit from curating their beaches into tourist economies, I think of the way we continually take advantage of the body of the Ocean, the life and solace it provides us, and with which we interact.

I appreciated the broad experience captured in “poetics”, which Mentz expands through “Aristotle’s claim that poetics combines pleasure and pain,” which “seems especially noteworthy for a blue humanities focus on the watery parts of the world that both allure and threaten human bodies. (139)” Even as we remain grounded in our homes and on land, the ocean reminds us of its mistreatment, and it asks us to pay the price. As the issue at the sewage plant worsens with inattention, it rightfully reminds us that even the gorgeous beaches and tanned cliffsides further up the coast can not escape the eventual devastation of human pollution.