I found the poem ‘Hand to mouth’ to be a particularly poignant piece in that it clearly sets out and engages openly with some of the major poetic activities taking place in this collection. The epigraph from Anna Wickham’s ‘Note on Rhyme’ foregrounds Certain Fathoms’ focus on subtleness and connections between people, nature, and human creations:
... verse is a wide net Through which many subtleties escape. Nor would I take it to capture a strong thing, Such as a whale.
The poem’s speaker immediately engages with this quotation, cementing her connection with Wickham and applying it to an uneasy natural setting.
It’s almost impossible. I stand here being mumbled,
hearing the bay’s mouth from above (water dull as traffic),
sight bigger than tongue.
Here, in crests of hanging sand, pipers fidget –
their sunken heads breathe, sift the unjust radio
earth:sky.
Active, connected with multiple different environments and filled with several different potential focal figures, including a personified bay, this poem is filled with interactions between bodies – human and water – as well as ways in which these interactions can be measured and located. While the imagery is beautiful, it is not presented without a hint of violence, possessiveness, and concern about these traits. Isolation of the speaker, separate from not only the environment but also the divers within it, indicates her role as primarily one of observation, but even this does not come easily.
Cassidy’s combination of shifting tone and structure, reminiscent of tidal movement, as well as her focus on the speaker’s ‘mouth’ and ‘lip’ cement the idea that there is fluidity in expression and variety in experience in such a setting. It is the speaker’s ability to speak and assess, rather than actively participate that is prized, while the divers are conversely respected for their direct, physical engagement.
I personally found the collection to be very enjoyable, as each poem shifts from one setting to another, but preserves enough in each preceding poem to suggest that they have been designed with common elements in mind. Some poems required more background reading than others, but still contain much that would be accessible to a casual reader. Cassidy’s sensitive portrayal of human relationships with nature, with one another, writing and societal features to name a few, celebrates the sense of being part of a larger framework, without being overwhelmed or feelings of being diminished. The dependency and mutual support of one element for another overrides the occasionally ominous tones in Certain Fathoms.
