And the big, long waves surgethrough the interreef passagesand break on the outermost reefs.There a sea-foam is madefrom the strong hydrodynamic forces.A witness of sorts to tidal flows, surf zones,these powerful turbulent jets and eddiesaround the flanks of reef.Beneath the whiteness,the coral on the shallow bottomrests its cells in the dappled sunlight.And there also the single-celled algae.Two forms of energy and capture these two,as a lover and a beloved in a lyric.When the waves are low there is sunlightand so the holobiont is happy, growing.When the water is turbid, when the light is limited,the corals then eat the algae.This too is a form of happy.By eating I mean the algae lives insidethe digestive cavity of the coral.By happy I mean the give and take ofvitamins, trace elements, nutrients, carbon dioxidethat should be understood as the most primal of loves.The lesson here is one of living in or on one anotherso as to build, maintain, and defend.One could make a politics of it.That is what confused Ovid did.Misunderstanding the coral as stone,not understanding its life.In his telling, Perseus created it when henestled Medusa’s head in plantshe found below the waves.This was right after he slayed the sea monsterso as to win Andromeda.Andromeda, she too was something else,something impossible for him to recognize.For she is lapped by sea-foam, as the Loeb puts it.Meaning she was of this intertidal realm,of the coral and the algae.When Perseus arrives he pulls her out and away.And what follows is the supposedfirst representation of a man falling in lovewith a woman on a stage.No one ever says anything aboutAndromeda falling in love.And of course, why would they?Andromeda seems rather awarethat her options are limited to slave or wife or servant.Is it not all here, in a story retold so many times?Is it not all we need to know about how hardit is for us to go forward?And also all the ways possible?Beneath the foam is all the symbiosisthat a Bakuninist could want.A poet too; all the metaphor a poet could want.All the choices for imagining survivalas living in or on one anotherin the coral-rich intertidal zoneof Andromeda,fish flickering in and out,the big, long waves surgingthrough the interreef passagesto break on the outermost reef wherea sea-foam is madefrom the strong hydrodynamic forces.There, a witness too.Tidal flows, surf zones, the flanks of reef.
coral, again
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“coral, again” from Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr.
Published by Wesleyan University Press on Feb 4, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Juliana Spahr.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Lyric meditations on writing poetry in a time of ecological crisis and right wing populism
During the time of an increasingly powerful alt-right which was also the time when species extinction was ever increasing, Juliana Spahr sat down to read Brecht. She was looking for an answer to Brecht's question about the dark times, about whether there will also be singing during the dark times. The answer that Brecht provides is that yes, that poets will sing of the dark times. In the six ars poeticas that Spahr writes, she sings of the dark times but also of coral, the pop song's possible liberation, and the love of comrades. She writes not only of the rich history of what politics and poetry have done with each other, but what they might yet do together.
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