"Positive Feedback Loop"
What Graham examines in this poem is the imminent possibility of
"complete collapse," of a world in which human behavior has altered a part of the natural world as fundamental as "thermohaline circulation" in the world's oceans (line 12)
The speaker imagines
"something else smiling elsewhere on another world," as if the deity had moved on from this experiment, on this planet, to another one more fortunate
"I am listening in this silence that precedes."
Answer: "Tipping point, flash/ point" We are instructed to listen for the signals of a tipping/flash point
"Positive Feedback Loop" subtitle:
June 2007
An example of positive feedback loop
The widespread release of methane in the Arctic accelerates the rate of global climate change
A positive feedback loop is
a disturbance to a system (often natural, such as an ecosystem), the immediate effects of which exacerbate and ramify the disturbance, causing it to grow
The poet uses the craft of poetry to create
a kind of positive feedback loop, metaphorically bc the poem itself is not a physical system, nor can its opening be defined as a disturbance
A tipping point is
a moment when the build-up of some force or set of forces suddenly exceeds the strength of the resisting object or force (as when 2 equal-weight kids on a see-saw are joined by a third, who sits on one side and causes it to tip)
One implication of Graham's opening line is that
a poem itself acts like a positive feedback loop - a disturbance to the quotidian flow of experience that will resonate far beyond the reading of the poem
The tab - a white space jump - to "beyond belief" creates
a vertiginous reading experience, the reader is suddenly plunged headlong across the page into...(s)he knows not what
The ultimate result of a positive feedback loop is therefore
amplified by the immediate effects and is ultimately far greater than would seem warranted by the size or degree of the initial disturbance
The poem moves away from imagining a future disaster that has already begun and into
an internal monologue, a stream-of-consciousness flow of thoughts and words, concerning identity as a function of being grounded in experience, relationships, and the body
The metaphysical speculations in lines 25 and following seem to devolve into
an inward spiral of self-reflexivity;
After this calamitous vision, the speaker is brought
back to herself, almost humorously: "An orchestra dies down. We have other plans/ for your summer is the tune."
Graham's decision to end the first line with the command "forget" creates
even greater tension (answer: "everything, start listening")
The poem's setting seems
futuristic, the brewing problems associated with climate change and with global political strife apparently having already reached a point of no return - a tipping point for climate change and a flash point for warfare
Positive feedback loops occur most ofen when
human behavior disturbs natural processes
A world erased of its familiar features - marine life, the great oceanic gyres - also
must erase the self and any notion of identity "Who is one when one calls oneself/ one?"
These lines (previous flashcard) articulate an experience of
negative theology, a condition of being abandoned by whatever higher power and meaning might have preceded the present
The logic of the speaker's interior monologue is
panic about the end of life on earth as well as the negative theology that it entails
Another enjambment line 2: "Tipping point, flash/"
reader left hanging until line 3: "point,/" ("flash point")
Having outlasted the happy era of a world not manifestly on the brink of environmental collapse, the speaker turns to
small things, seeking to appreciate the present in all its rich detail, "even the grass," which the speaker perceives at the poem's end to be "gleaming"
The poem continues to develop the idea of past, existing, and impending catastrophes by
suggesting the ongoing presence of general global catastrophes: "convective chimneys in the seas bounded by Greenland" "salvos at the four corners of the horizon, that was/ war"
The poem is about
the marine environmental crisis that is slowly unfolding as a result of global climate change
In /Sea Change/, Graham draws on recent research in
the marine sciences in order to imagine an anthropogenic marine disaster - a watery apocalypse
In this poet's dark night of the soul, the deepest anxiety lives in
the notion that beauty can cease, "the mind/ finds itself uncertain again, it calls, something hands up on it, just like that, you hear/ the receiver go down, power and its end..."
What holds this section (25 and on) together is
the overarching sense of the speaker's identity crisis, having been catalyzed by anxiety about a world on the verge of environmental collapse
What the speaker hears in "the-silence-that-precedes," is
the prophecy of impending environmental calamity at a global level
Enjambment
the technique of ending a line of poetry without end punctuation, creates tensio nfor the reader, who feels rused to see what will appear at the start of the next line
In the end, the speaker resolves that the only possible response to the consciousness of living on the brink of "The Great Dying again, the time in which life on earth is all but wiped out/ again" is
to "be patient—we must wait—it is a/ lovely evening, a bit of food and drink—we/ shall walk/ out onto the porch and the evening shall come on around us, unconcealed,/ blinking, abundant, as if catching sight of us...."
The poet employs
varying line lengths, white space, broken narratives, and stream-of-consciousness to develop a theme that disorients the reader
