Carl Sandburg's "Young Sea" is a simple poem, so simple that the speaker actually does little more than make a few banal statements.
“Young Sea” is composed of six free verse paragraphs, which are uneven, ranging from two lines to five lines of unrimed, rhythmless word groupings. The speaker makes several claims that reveal rather mundane observations about the ocean.
First Verse Paragraph: “The sea is never still”
The first verse paragraph begins with an unremarkable claim, one that a five-year-old might notice after her first fifteen minutes of ocean observation: “The sea is never still.” Then he continues with another unremarkable observation, “It pounds on the shore,” which is not grammatically accurate: he means, “it pounds upon the shore.” The sea is not already on the shore; it has to travel upon the shore before it can “pound” there.
The lines, “Restless as a young heart, / Hunting,” offer the first sign of poetic life in the poem. Here the sea is likened metaphorically to a young person who is “restless” and searching for something in life.
Second Verse Paragraph: “The sea speaks”
In the second verse paragraph, the speaker offers a bit more substantial fare, as he claims that when the sea speaks, it speaks to those who are restless, those with a “stormy heart.” He dramatizes the sea’s offering by asserting that “It is the face / of a rough mother speaking.”
The reader might assume that by “rough mother,” he means a firm and disciplining mother, but the poet could have been more helpful if he had looked for a more precise term.
Third Verse Paragraph: “The sea is young”
Even though the sea is a “rough mother,” in the third verse paragraph, the speaker asserts that the sea is young, a young mother one presumes, unless the poem is merely a list of metaphors going nowhere.
The speaker then asserts that a storm clears the frost and makes the sea appear ageless. The speaker attests to hearing the sea laugh and declares that it is “reckless.”
Fourth Verse Paragraph: “They love the sea”
Sailors, explorers, and other “[m]en who ride on it” are the ones who love the sea. And even as they love it, they “know they will die / Under the salt of it.” The reader will wonder how they know this, and why, since not all those who have ventured upon sea have died under its salt.
Fifth Verse Paragraph: “Let only the young come”
The fifth verse paragraph consists of only two lines wherein the sea speaks asking only that young people come to the sea—an unusual prejudice for an old thing like the ocean to harbor.
Sixth Verse Paragraph: “Let them kiss my face”
The sixth verse paragraph unfortunately does not rescue the vapidity of this work. The speaker has the sea saying, “Let them kiss my face / And hear me.” Well, perhaps a good solid smack in the face by a wave could pass as a kiss, and it would be heard as well.
And why does the sea want only the young to come and kiss its face? The sea claims: “I am the last word / And I tell / Where storms and stars come from.” What reader could resist responding, “No, I don’t think you do”?
Commentary
Carl Sandburg is an excellent poet, who has written many fine poems, but this is not one of them. Nevertheless, because beginning students/readers of poetry need to be able to compare the well-written and the not-so-well-written works, it is important for those students/readers to experience even the uninspired work of the best poets.
