In his preface to Ocean Avenue, Philip Levine describes the compilation as “a book of motion” and “a book of enormous calm” (3-4). The book’s poems often contemplate moments of motion, though, if one were to identify a unifying theme running throughout the volume, it would seem to be nostalgia for stillness. The poet seems fascinated by the prospect of cessation. As she asks in “Photo Album,” “What if the wind stopped and the waves of the oceans stopped” (35)? Or, as the poet ponders in “Air,” “What if the air turns solid and locks us into place” (62)?

Beneath this desire for calm lies the aspiration to capture the mystery of many simple observations that modern society so often dismisses as mundane. When the mind becomes “almost visible,” the poet contends, “you know there is nothing that is not mysterious” (75). The conviction that “nothing is background or extra” and the corollary belief that any moment unnoticed represents a potential insight foregone, drive the majority of the volume’s pieces (40, 57). Morling’s poems aspire to instill within the reader an awareness of the aesthetic power contained in the simple ability to observe, so long as one observes with the sensitivity for beauty and mystery with which the poet contends to observe. Her discussion of a woman who just dropped a letter in the book’s title poem “Ocean Avenue” would appear to encapsulate the creative experience, as understood by the poet. The woman’s detection of a “subtle grace” offers a “whole new awareness” that in turn conditions her to observe and discover beauty in phenomena she would otherwise have overlooked (46).

Such an anecdote also testifies to the edifying capacity of Morling’s poems. The woman’s “new awareness” replicates itself, as it is sent “on to another” (46). Though one might take issue with Philip Levine’s assertion that Morling represents “the most utterly Blakean poet I have encountered in years,” her poetic ambitions do seem utterly Romantic in origin. As Wordsworth stated in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads:

“The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way… accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets.”

Unfortunately, however, Morling’s poems do not always succeed in donning an imaginative color. The poem “You Look Outside” presents a compilation of observations. Each seems random, and no evident symbolic link appears to unite these observations and drive the reader toward some greater insight or argument. Although the poet introduces the descriptor “Magellanic” to describe the clouds she sees, this image only elaborates upon the nature of the clouds; it would seem to have little bearing on the windows, mannequins, tables, books, railings, or rivers also described in the piece (15). It is possible that this poem, like so many others in the collection, seeks no end. It may, like Magellan, only desire to explore, venturing (unconcerned with retrospection) from one moment of sensitive observation to the next.

If so, Morling’s poetry could perhaps be described as impressionistic. It strives to capture the inherently aesthetic dimension of observation and reveal the “inexplicable riches” inherent in even simple experience (4). Nevertheless, this approach to poetry flirts closely with the didactic, especially in poems where Morling makes little use of those poetic devices (like metaphor, simile, image, or symbol) that, by presenting thoughts in “unusual ways,” complicate and enrich them. In “On Seventh Avenue South,” the poet enjoins us, the readers, to “walk more slowly” as “you will never again be whoever you were just then as that moment passed” (20). We are told to walk more slowly, and we receive logically sound justification for this counsel. Such a direct command, however, appears bland and didactic.

We already know (at least at some visceral level) that we change with each moment. Even if some of us fail to contemplate the implications of this truth as thoroughly as the poet, the statement provides no real insight into why “it doesn’t matter if you miss the train, it doesn’t matter if you miss all the trains” (20). The poet’s failure to symbolically present this concept in the unusual but introspectively rich language of imaginative coloring reduces the poem to something of a truism. The reader clearly understands the poet’s belief that she sees more sensitively than he. Thus, it is disappointing when the poet employs her acute capacities of observation merely to tell the reader, in explicit command, his need to cultivate a similar richness of sight.

I enjoyed Ocean Avenue, even if I found some of its poems didactic and literal. The poems are predominantly lyrical. Few have cohesive narrative structures, yet in spite of their lyricism, few of the poems suffer from the self-absorption characteristic of much lyrical poetry. Because Morling focuses her poetry on experience of the external world, few of her poems become so enraptured in a thought or line of consciousness that they become esoteric to the reader. Everyone can access by imaginative empathy the array of ordinary observations that pervade Ocean Avenue. I, however, remain skeptical that her poetry consistently manages to prove as “profound and mysterious” as Philip Levine regards it.