I've had it in mind for some time to write an essay on three first
books that took the seashore as their primary focus of attention:
H.D.'s _Sea Garden_, Rachel Carson's _Under the Sea WInd_, Pat Reed's
_Sea Asleep_. (The conjunction isn't entirely arbitrary: H.D. and
Carson deeply inform the work of Reed.)

What I like about thresholds--seashores, for instance--is that they
allow us to conceive of marginality as the center of the world rather
than its outer edge. Carson's work has been a great boon to me in
theorizing a threshold poetics in this way, _The Edge of the Sea_ even
more than _Under the Sea Wind_. Consider this--

	Where the waves roll in from the open Atlantic, with no outlying 
	islands or curving arm of land to break the force of their attack on 
	the beach, the area between the tide lines is a difficult one for
living 
	things. It is a world of force and change and constant motion, where 
	even the sand acquires some of the fluidity of water. These 
	exposed beaches have few inhabitants, for only the most 
	specialized creatures can live on sand amid heavy surf.

The Anglo-American threshold? Just asking . . .

Ben F.


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