Point of View

“Sea Superstitions” is told from the first-person point of view using the pronoun “I”. The speaker doesn’t directly appear until fifteen lines into the poem: “though they took my coin […] They said I was bad luck” (Lines 15, 17). Later, it’s revealed that the past tense voice is a retrospective as the speaker looks back on a difficult, formative memory. The horrible events of the poem are delivered through a largely objective voice, which is later understood to be an effect of the speaker’s newly unfeeling state of mind. This allows the plot to speak for itself without much emotional colouration. Despite the objectivity, however, the first-person perspective creates an intimacy that the poem would not have had with a more traditional third-person “storyteller” voice.

Language and Meaning

The language used in this poem is predominantly straightforward and accessible, with few word choices that...