Imagining Seals (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Imagining Seals Maurya Simon (bio) Susanna Roxman . Imagining Seals. Dionysia Press. The two opening poems in Susanna Roxman's wise, compelling, and richly evocative volume, Imagining Seals, seamlessly conflate first the soul and then women with seafaring seals. There's an etymological basis for this first union, as the epigraph for the book's title poem asserts: " 'Sjal,' a Swedish noun once also meaning 'seal,' now only stands for 'soul.' " The poem enacts an apprehension (and appreciation) of the seal-as-soul in unpredictable, pleasing, and original ways. The seals-as-souls "play on carillons of glass," and "live effortlessly by lunar logic, / are psychic, understand cycles," and by "diving into dreamless depths, / they reinvent you, serene and healing." Many of these aforementioned qualities could also be ascribed to women as well as to the soul, especially apropos the female propensity for "lunar logic," for often having enhanced psychic abilities, and because of women's ancient associations with being healers. Thus the idea of seals-as-souls-as-women becomes a meaningful motif (and one which also alludes to women's transformative powers) in the opening and subsequent poems. Interestingly, after the title poem allures the reader with a litany of the "otherworldly," magical, and transformative abilities of seals, its ending line serves as a sobering "reality check": "Mostly, though, your mind is not on seals." Thus, the poet acknowledges how we are all too often given to being pragmatic, mundane, and unintuitive in the ways we apprehend the world and our own lives. "Seal Women," the book's second poem, declares in its first line that "Women are like seals" and then develops this comparison in striking and memorable ways: "Their breastbones full of roses / would make beautiful Irish / harps with ribs for strings" and "If a seal takes you to her grotto, / count yourself lucky, / it's your privilege but not a right." These last lines recognize the undeniable sexual power of women. Yet the poet also reveals the vulnerabilities that seals and women have historically shared, since both "have been chased about, harassed, / abundantly clubbed or shot, / survivors of cold, of hatred," and who therefore have "no reason to trust you." The poem's ending asserts that, ultimately, both creatures cannot be truly "tamed" because they are possessed of an irrepressible independence and wildness that are inborn and unpredictable. With an attachment to and affinity for several countries and cultures—the poet was born in Stockholm and lives in southern Sweden, has Scottish roots, and studied English literature at King's College, London University, and Gothenburg University, where she earned a PhD in comparative literature—Roxman often celebrates urban and rural Scottish landscapes, as in "Winter Solstice Near Skye," in the book's second section, where "Mist is a window of wool, / frost is a forest of fur." (Her skilled use of alliteration in these metaphorically astute lines adds to their pleasure.) The poet returns to the earlier motif of a dual (or split) self in "At Camera Obscura, Edinburgh," where she sees her shadow as "my other self butterflied here, / [End Page 161] upon a spotless wall." The shadow, that illusive other self we all possess, is "hard to desert," and so the poet yearns to "[run] back to face and claim // that vulnerable creature left behind," both symbolically and literally (because of the optical effect of the camera obscura). The recurring motif or theme of transformation (or of performing transformative acts) reappears in "At Planet Coffee, Edinburgh," where there are "half a dozen people / upright as candles, dark, / backlit, but, on the ceiling, / small spotlights making each crown / radiant." In this coffee shop, the poet experiences a delicate epiphany: "And I, with my profound fear / of the human species, // suddenly thought / there was perhaps another aspect / that I had missed, / awareness or vision // of something else and better," and she subsequently experiences "a drawing close to some underground altar." Perhaps this "altar" serves symbolically as a place of communion with other people, and as a place that ritualizes inner change (and transformation) for the poet. The poem "Other Places" allows Roxman to achieve another important insight and moving epiphany via her examination of...