Crossing Space and Time with Poet Caitlin Swalec

“If 

your daily

 life seems poor, do 

not blame it; blame 

yourself that you are not poet 

enough to call forth its riches.”

 - Rainer Marie Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet

Caitlin Swalec, a young poet herself hailing from a sylvan area 

of Maine, finds the poetry all around her. 

In elementary school, her first ever published poem, 

Ripple, was inspired by her “splashing around lakes.” 

Now living in Santa Barbara, A Deep Blue Devotion 

is inspired by the Pacific Ocean. In fact, 

Swalec credits much of her poetic imagination to the “ocean and mountains,” 

which she experiences on runs and swims. But there is much more behind 

Swalec’s poetry than just beautiful observations made in the flow state of nature. 

Her bookshelf spans eons, with a list of favorites 

including contemporaries like Rupi Kaur, legends like Robert Frost,

 and even classics like Catullus, appreciating his “brief and brilliant” style. 

There is some Frost in A Deep Blue Devotion. Similar to his poem 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, it describes this moment of complete

absorption in nature as a “liminal place.” And although these two New Englanders clearly share a great reverence for the outdoors, they differ greatly in style. 

In that way, Swalec calls more to another school of poetry: objectivism. 

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams, a foundational objectivist poem,

is formatted to look like a wheelbarrow being lifted up. Williams uses long lines 

followed by short lines to create this effect. The poem is not only meaningful in sound

or content, but in its own objective state as well. Similarly, A Deep Blue Devotion is a swaying poem, with each line of the first four stanzas

 beginning in a slightly adjusted spot. To me, this poem looks like waves.

 Just as Swalec describes her body as “a vessel” riding the waves of the sea,

her mind rides the waves of language in her poetry. This tool is used brilliantly 

to add a layer to a beautifully relatable poem about finding restoration 

in the ever-present, ever-changing ocean. 

Poetry like Swalec’s – simple, 

relatable, layered, intentional – 

is what keeps “the ebb and flow”

in our creative world. If you, too,

enjoyed reading A Deep Blue 

Devotion on the blog, make sure 

to find her new poem, World Makers, 

in the thirteenth volume of the Santa 

Barbara Literary Journal, Mysterious Ways.