The Many Uses of the Ocean
Review of Felicity Plunkett’s A Kinder Sea (2020)
By Anna Roberts
Felicity Plunkett’s poetry collection A Kinder Sea, published in 2020, reconfigures depictions of the ocean to interpret myriad relationship dynamics, from lost loves to stable partnerships. A Kinder Sea moves through five sections: “A Corner of the Sea,” “Carmine Horizon,” “In Search of the Miraculous,” “Grace,” and “Heartland,” all of which explore themes of intimacy, artistic creation, and memories. Plunkett’s poems are fast-moving and free-flowing, ranging in length from eight lines to twelve pages. Teeming with intertextuality and allusions, the collection places itself in a lineage of poetic history — beginning with the title, which, as Plunkett mentions in the notes, “is inspired by Michael Burch’s translation of a Plato poem: “‘Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, but go with good fortune; I wish you a kinder sea.’” This quote is widely misattributed to Emily Dickinson.
The poems in A Kinder Sea are not bound by rigid rules but rather mimic the ebbs and flows of the ocean itself. The poem “Sound Bridge” begins the collection by addressing the complexities of human connection, with the lines “My son sings the Lacrimosa in Hodonín: joy - / bright teens with a hundred Moravian choristers. Lurch / and tangle, the holding, the letting.” Enjambment creates organic, flowing movements that carry throughout the rest of the collection. This piece stands alone, placed before the five distinctly titled sections that follow, and primes the audience to notice the themes of love, anxiety, and creation that will be amplified and complicated in the collection’s following poems. The motif of bridges returns most notably in the last section of the collection. In “Bridge Physics,” Plunkett demonstrates her ability to approach a topic from different angles, providing a sense of circularity and cohesion without repetitiveness. The poem examines resilience and tension within relationships: while many of the collection’s poems center around heartbreak and loss, here Plunkett provides a new perspective. She writes “The good / you do to me, I do you. Your (wrist), grit, breath / voice - steady on”, intimating that the strength of the relationship stems from reciprocity. The highly fragmented style and repetition of phrases create a strong sense of rhythm and a musical quality, both characteristic of Plunkett’s style.
One of Plunkett’s chief concerns is the relationship between memory and the body. In “What the Sea Remembers”, she writes “Trace / of all forgetting/ Relics of a life, however brief / vast archive, take my / griefs small file. Cradle / our bodies, undo them, organ / by organ.” She expresses a desire for the sea to be a preserving yet freeing force, holding on to memories that are too painful to carry. The speaker’s wish is to be treated gently and “cradled,” yet remade in the wake of loss. In this piece, the choppiness of constant enjambments and sentence fragments reflects the harsh movements of waves.
Meanwhile, “Carpus Diem” leans deeper into the anatomical. This work plays with extremes of divinity and the body to discuss romantic devotion. Opening with the litany “Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum,” listing the bones of the wrist, Plunkett then escalates to the simile: “let me / be methodical as a med student late / at night - cram details of you into my skin’s / memory.” Again, she links the idea of enduring memories with the body rather than the mind. The line “then linger like sacrament/, relish, fetish” merges the religious and the erotic, drawing on the multidimensional mechanics behind desire. While “What the Sea Remembers” reflects on the urge to leave fraught memories with the ocean, “Carpus Diem” speaks to the fervent desire to create those same memories in the first place.
In her work, Plunkett also openly addresses the mechanics and processes of writing poetry. Her metafictional musings often directly address the poetic form. In “Strand,” a poem about grief for someone referred to as “you,” she opens with “Every poem has a secret addressee. Every secret / a shoreline.” Plunkett lets the reader in on the secret behind her writing process, framing the poem in a new light by comparing the act of writing poetry with the state of longing. Similarly, “Thirteen Uses for a Poem” highlights poetry’s ability to hold memories, develop ideas, and alleviate emotional pain through thirteen numbered stanzas. She writes “Library of lost things, expect / yours. Instead / forgotten jetsam: / scraps of unlabeled / prayers whispering silence,” speaking to the ability of poems to unburden by storing a secret or emotion one wants to forget. Plunkett also uses the language of poetry and grammar to portray emotional experiences; in “Glass Letters,” she works through the ordeal of letting go of past relationships by declaring “How diligently we fish / for a noun to release / our correspondence into grace,” then, later, “is it enough to bottle words, enough / to write and then let go? To lob them / from my craft, discard / the unspeakable?” Here, Plunkett uses poetic diction and direct references to her own work to examine the unstable process of slowly losing contact with someone.
Sharp and insightful, A Kinder Sea moves between styles and themes to reflect on varying forms of intimacy. Across the collection, Plunkett demonstrates her range as she carefully crafts vastly different moments and evokes poignant emotions. Plunkett’s interest in investigating relationships through stages of hopeful beginnings, tense breakdowns, and painful absences is paired impeccably with her dynamic style and acute wordplay.
11 May 2026