A poetry chapbook that reflects on shifting time and tides through the language of the shoreline.Pattie McCarthy’s e
xtraordinary tidesoccupies a space in the intertidal, the in-between place of not-quite-land and not-quite-sea. The poems reflect on passing time, fluctuating tides, and on our efforts to predict both. Upon a ground that is always in flux beneath us, McCarthy invites us to question if and how we really know where we are. Considering the language of the tides, the poems in this chapbook make a wrackline palimpsest, a seastruck archive, a marginalia of the littoral.
McCarthy's
extraordinary tides is the winner of the 2021 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, chosen by Rae Armantrout.
Pattie McCarthyis the author of seven books of poetry, most recently
Wifthing. She is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at Temple University.
“McCarthy’s extraordinary tidesgorgeously breathes the back and forth of water and liminal space but also racks serious balls. Bishop’s verse that says where the land meets the sea is ‘literature’—here this idea finds a brittle, punctuated alphabet made of the things collected: oyster comma, gentle cloud commas. Simultaneously, McCarthy sees the world through the maintenance and survival of her own body, a witch’s circle, and from her observations can build entire days, and entire beings: ‘We hold a useless language on our tongues, and it becomes useful.’”
“I was first drawn to extraordinary tidesby the beauty and strangeness of its language. Strange compound words (some neologisms, some not) such as ‘wrackline,’ ‘boyfull,’ ‘holdfast,’ ‘distelfink,’ ‘bladderwrack,’ and ‘seastruck’ seem temporarily agglomerated like the kelp and shells mixed in the latest high tlÓ)
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