Sea Sick

Chad Pelley is impressed with the metaphor-making in Sue Goyette's new collection of poems:

In Ocean, Sue wades in metaphoric reaction to a life lived by the sea. The ocean is an image-and subtext-rich thing on the margins of her everyday life, and she plays off this, fishing fantastic parallels between the ebb and flow of the Atlantic and life itself. But this is not run-of-the-mill poetry in which the poet uses the ocean to reflect on one’s life, or the world, or our place in it—Goyette plunges much deeper than that, both stylistically and conceptually. She’s making up her own metaphorical ocean mythology in these poems, and it makes for vibrant, innovative poetry.

Chad Campbell doesn't think she pulls it off:

“Everything is connected!”, Goyette’s speaker proclaims, and yes, it is: because a world has been created in which there are no boundaries between anything—not dreams, matter, smells, senses, concepts, or memories—and their connections aren’t revealed because they are presented as fact. Goyette doesn’t have to ground or hone her metaphors, to fashion cohesive conceits, because she has created this world with a structure that implicitly excuses their failings and obscurities.

Sample poem: "The ocean is the original mood ring"