A Tattletale Sound
Shipwreck songs move us, move us uniquely, because we all die. The ship is the ship of state of course. It is also, in some contexts, the church. I think it is often the body. A ship is sailed by fools, blind to their folly. Captains go down with ships, bravely and sometimes mere lads do as well (at least in Victorian verse). Whichever way, ships do only one thing poetically speaking. They sink. If they sink memorably, they are immortalized in song. Songs about shipwrecks speak, proleptically, of the ultimate shipwreck of our bodies, fortunes and even of our own souls. Further, all shipwreck songs are one song. A poet, if they are a real poet, may attempt to write new one, to introduce novelty, but, as sure as the tides, the archetypes will master them. The shipwreck tale will impose its nature willy-nilly on any poet tuned in, beyond ratiocination or discursive chatter, to the primordial shape of life. The shipwreck tale will tell us who is a poet and who is a poser by how deeply and ...