Jennifer Bussey holds a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies and a bachelor's degree in English literature and is an independent writer specializing in literature. In the following essay, she explores water imagery in “Seeing You.”

Valentine's use of water imagery in “Seeing You” provides continuity and meaning to the poet's reflections on love. With water imagery, she taps into a tradition that has been sustained throughout literature. As far back as Homer's Odyssey, readers find water as symbolic of movement, possibility, danger, and journeying. Mark Twain used the river in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to stand for the journey of life, where one encounters things that can be controlled and others that cannot. The deep, mysterious ocean in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick represents danger, fate, and the unknown. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, water imagery symbolizes continuity and calm in contrast to the chaos...