Perception vs. Reality
1Beginning the poem, the reader gets a bird-eye view of a lovely, sweet New England seaside town. Everything is orderly and appealing; it is peaceful, abundant, and seemingly undisturbed by any external or internal threat. This continues for several lines until a storm sweeps in suddenly, sowing confusion, and the reader is then taken into the town itself. Here the view is a lot less sentimental. There is a potentially problematic church offering false hope, a possibly insidious steeple-jack, and the imminent decay of the whales. Perhaps the town is not as fecund as once thought; perhaps it is not as ideal or inspiring as once thought. Moore cautions readers about artifice and "elegance." She doesn't disavow such things completely, as seen in Ambrose and his delight in the landscape of the seaside town, but she does warn.
Poetry and Art
This poem shows Moore revealing what the art of poetry can accomplish, but also, as critic Guy Rotella writes, "exposes the threat that art will carry its proclivity for order too far." The rigid waves, the orderly seagulls barely flapping their wings, the matching houses can potentially conceal within their orderly sameness a disturbing, even sinister element. Poetry and art cannot, then, present reality; they can only hint at it and the perspicacious reader must see that. As Rotella notes, "We use art to decreate false constructs, to repair 'untrue' creations, and to make 'untrue' creations of our own. The greatest danger of all is that we will confuse the sign for substance or give up any hope of contact between sign and substance at all."
Nature
The town is an orderly manifestation of civilization. Everything is lovely, abundant, peaceful, and sustainable. However, the storm begins and "disturbs stars in the sky and the / star on the steeple." Everything is "confusion." Nature has the power to disrupt the harmony of humanity, which it does here by blowing open the ideal, false perception of the town and showing readers that all is not perfect here.
