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Nobody
This is a book-length poem – a collage of water-stories, taken mostly from the Odyssey – about a minor character, abandoned on a stony island. It is not a translation, though, but a close inspection of the sea that surrounds him. There are several voices in the poem but no proper names, although its presiding spirit is Proteus, the shape-shifting sea-god. We recognise other mythical characters – Helios, Icarus, Alcyone, Philoctetes, Calypso, Clytemnestra, Orpheus, Poseidon, Hermes – who drift in and out of the poem, surfacing briefly before disappearing.
Reading Nobody is like watching the ocean: a destabilising experience that becomes mesmeric, almost hallucinatory, as we slip our earthly moorings and follow the circling shoal of sea voices into a mesh of sound and light and water – fluid, abstract, and moving with the wash of waves. As with all of Alice Oswald’s work, this is poetry that is made for the human voice, but this poem takes on the qualities of another element: dense, muscular and liquid.
one person has the character of dust
another has an arrow for a soul
but their stories all end
somewhere
in the sea
Reading Nobody is like watching the ocean: a destabilising experience that becomes mesmeric, almost hallucinatory, as we slip our earthly moorings and follow the circling shoal of sea voices into a mesh of sound and light and water – fluid, abstract, and moving with the wash of waves. As with all of Alice Oswald’s work, this is poetry that is made for the human voice, but this poem takes on the qualities of another element: dense, muscular and liquid.
one person has the character of dust
another has an arrow for a soul
but their stories all end
somewhere
in the sea
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 25, 2018
About the author
Alice Oswald
32 books244 followersAlice Oswald (born 1966) is a British poet who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
September 27, 2021
This beautiful book was first published in 2018 and I bought my copy almost exactly two years ago, since when it has languished with other outsized books on a lower shelf. Away from its natural habitat with the other poetry.
The first thing to strike you about this book is the size. The unusual format of a A4 size for any book, let alone poetry. (A4 is very close to the US Letter size) But this is poetry and art.
William Tillyer has given us twenty-three watercolour paintings, each on its own full page. One series binds the book, giving us entrée and dessert, while the other is served mixed with Alice Oswald’s poetic text.
I was drawn to the book by talk of a linkage to Greek mythology, hints of The Odyssey and The Oresteia, but any knowledge of these is absolutely unrequired to be able to enjoy the lyrical imagery of the poetry. They are a distant hint, a mirage of an island on an open ocean. The words speak eloquently for themselves without reference to anyone.
This collaboration is all about water. That was how I came to know of Alice Oswald in the first place, having read her composition called Dart all about the River Dart in Devon, England. This book continues the watery imagery and is wonderfully unique.
My attention was caught at once by a short paragraph that sets up the core theme of the book. It is almost a throw-away line from The Odyssey which relates to other spin off stories. Collectively these are known as the “Nostri” a Greek word meaning the “Returns”. It is also the name for a now missing classical epic which would have filled in some of the missing stories of others returning from their ten years war in front of the walls of Troy. These stories were picked up and expanded by later playwrights – Sophocles, Euripides and the like. This little quote from Book 3 of The Odyssey at the beginning of the book says:
The quote is located 11 sheets, or 22 pages, from the first line of the poem, pages of paintings and blank sheets. But this is a book that challenges you to look closely. The same lines are replicated a few pages later, but in a light grey font. This almost invisible script also appears at the end of the book, where there are five pages of names, listing the characters from Ancient Greek epics. It includes Nobody, which was of course the name used by the wily Odysseus to confuse the cyclops, Polyphemus, whom he blinds in his single eye. The giant calls out “Nobody is killing me” and so no-one comes to his rescue.
All this talk of mythology is distracting, because what this poem demands the most is simply to be read. To allow the words to soar and the rhythm to overtake you. It is even better if you are able to read it aloud. There is very little punctuation to guide you, but go back and read again, pause where you don’t at first expect to, and things will fall into place.
Let me give you a taste with this, the whole third page of verse:
You can see from this that we are not set in classical times – there is a bathrobe and an ashtray and soon there will be polystyrene. But what we do have is our figure lost at sea, marooned on a tiny island surrounded by the water which is his only means of escape. I really hope that you will enjoy the words as much as I did. I had to go back and admire all the watercolours once I had absorbed the words. This is a book to read all at once and then take time over.
The first thing to strike you about this book is the size. The unusual format of a A4 size for any book, let alone poetry. (A4 is very close to the US Letter size) But this is poetry and art.
William Tillyer has given us twenty-three watercolour paintings, each on its own full page. One series binds the book, giving us entrée and dessert, while the other is served mixed with Alice Oswald’s poetic text.
I was drawn to the book by talk of a linkage to Greek mythology, hints of The Odyssey and The Oresteia, but any knowledge of these is absolutely unrequired to be able to enjoy the lyrical imagery of the poetry. They are a distant hint, a mirage of an island on an open ocean. The words speak eloquently for themselves without reference to anyone.
This collaboration is all about water. That was how I came to know of Alice Oswald in the first place, having read her composition called Dart all about the River Dart in Devon, England. This book continues the watery imagery and is wonderfully unique.
My attention was caught at once by a short paragraph that sets up the core theme of the book. It is almost a throw-away line from The Odyssey which relates to other spin off stories. Collectively these are known as the “Nostri” a Greek word meaning the “Returns”. It is also the name for a now missing classical epic which would have filled in some of the missing stories of others returning from their ten years war in front of the walls of Troy. These stories were picked up and expanded by later playwrights – Sophocles, Euripides and the like. This little quote from Book 3 of The Odyssey at the beginning of the book says:
And there was a poet there, whom Agamemnon, when he went to Troy, ordered strictly to guard his wife; but once fate had forced her to be seduced, then Aegistheus took the poet to a desert island and left him there as a lump of food for the birds, so the lover willingly took her willing to his house.
The quote is located 11 sheets, or 22 pages, from the first line of the poem, pages of paintings and blank sheets. But this is a book that challenges you to look closely. The same lines are replicated a few pages later, but in a light grey font. This almost invisible script also appears at the end of the book, where there are five pages of names, listing the characters from Ancient Greek epics. It includes Nobody, which was of course the name used by the wily Odysseus to confuse the cyclops, Polyphemus, whom he blinds in his single eye. The giant calls out “Nobody is killing me” and so no-one comes to his rescue.
All this talk of mythology is distracting, because what this poem demands the most is simply to be read. To allow the words to soar and the rhythm to overtake you. It is even better if you are able to read it aloud. There is very little punctuation to guide you, but go back and read again, pause where you don’t at first expect to, and things will fall into place.
Let me give you a taste with this, the whole third page of verse:
She said my friend someone is watching us you will not
win over you will not walk over me easily
as over the shallows of a river but Fate
that great failure of the will that great goddess
putting on a tremulous voice and smiling
and dressed in the white bathrobe of her lover
said dearest I have already doomed that watcher
I took him to an island the merest upthrust
of a stony shoulder sticking from the sea
and he paces there as dry as an ashtray
making up poems about us patchwork unfinished
while a sea crow walks to and fro ready to eat out his eyes
what does it matter what he sings
there is all this water between us
and it is blind a kind of blind blue eye
it is alive it is dead it more or less ignores us
look at all these ripples everywhere complete with their shadows
I do not think a human for example
Drowning in this measureless mosaic or floating up again
I do not think he will
hear us
You can see from this that we are not set in classical times – there is a bathrobe and an ashtray and soon there will be polystyrene. But what we do have is our figure lost at sea, marooned on a tiny island surrounded by the water which is his only means of escape. I really hope that you will enjoy the words as much as I did. I had to go back and admire all the watercolours once I had absorbed the words. This is a book to read all at once and then take time over.
February 26, 2024
Disappointing, especially when compared to Oswald's very impressive take on the Iliad ("Memorial"). Some beautiful lines and images, but hard to gain traction as a whole. Compounding this was that my edition lacked the illustrations that were part of the original effort.
October 24, 2019
Oswald's 2011 collection "Memorial" is a reworking of the Iliad, focusing on its emotion and energy. "Nobody" is a similar evocation of the Odyssey, focusing on peripheral characters, and exploring the ocean as a character within the Odyssey. The relationship of human beings with the ocean is a central concern. Oswald is the best poet working in the English language today, and everything she writes is imaginative, energetic, and of the highest poetic skill. She also constantly pushes the boundaries of what language can do -- can she capture the exact feelings of moving water? Can she explore what it is to be an ocean? She's also talented at evoking emotion, and the place where the natural world meets and creates emotion within human beings. All that being said, this is not her best collection, and I felt some of the work she does here repeated ideas from her last collection, "Falling Awake", and that "Falling Awake" was more effective -- but even Oswald's lesser works reach heights that few poets manage in their whole careers.
"Nobody" was originally published alongside a collection of water-colours: I do not have access to that edition, and am curious about it, as I imagine it makes a difference to the experience of reading these poems. As they stand, the poems spill over the pages: Oswald generally uses lines of approximately the same length, but they take up different parts of the page, and give a sense of wandering or of constant movement: very appropriate for the sea. I read this slowly over the last 20 days or so, but it's so rich with imagery and character I feel like I missed a lot of elements, and it could easily be reread multiple times. Certain sections stay in my mind, and Oswald's precise word-choices and lyrical energy are always engaging and memorable. This section, in particular, has remained in my imagination for days:
Tell me muse about this ancient passer-by
who found himself adrift in infinite space
with all the planets flying in loops around him
like listless gods
all kind of light and unlight he witnessed
until his eye-metal rusted away
and now there is no going back no edge no law
no horizon or harbour-wall or rubble breakwater
can keep out this formless from his sightless
nevertheless the grey sea-voice lapping at his skull
even through closed teeth goes on whispering
"Nobody" was originally published alongside a collection of water-colours: I do not have access to that edition, and am curious about it, as I imagine it makes a difference to the experience of reading these poems. As they stand, the poems spill over the pages: Oswald generally uses lines of approximately the same length, but they take up different parts of the page, and give a sense of wandering or of constant movement: very appropriate for the sea. I read this slowly over the last 20 days or so, but it's so rich with imagery and character I feel like I missed a lot of elements, and it could easily be reread multiple times. Certain sections stay in my mind, and Oswald's precise word-choices and lyrical energy are always engaging and memorable. This section, in particular, has remained in my imagination for days:
Tell me muse about this ancient passer-by
who found himself adrift in infinite space
with all the planets flying in loops around him
like listless gods
all kind of light and unlight he witnessed
until his eye-metal rusted away
and now there is no going back no edge no law
no horizon or harbour-wall or rubble breakwater
can keep out this formless from his sightless
nevertheless the grey sea-voice lapping at his skull
even through closed teeth goes on whispering
May 16, 2018
A precious object, nearly seventy pages of Alice's astounding imagery woven together with Tillyer's luminous watercolor poetry. You need to visit the Bernard Jacobson (or call them) to get it.
January 14, 2021
This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. If you do, read it aloud, alone, and in one sitting.
March 11, 2026
water... the sea, the shore, island exile, marine wandering, domestic betrayal, death, drowning, surfacing, falling...war and the spiral scything of human fates...a brilliant poem to be read again and again.
May 28, 2020
My new year resolution was to read more poetry. I started the year off with this. It follows loosely a lesser character from The Odyssey, a book I have just finished...but it is about the sea and water and time I think too. I read it slowly several times over, it is utterly, beautiful. I think it worked so well for me partly because I have Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey fresh in my mind. Some sections made me stop and reread again and again for the wonderful images and thoughts they conjured up in my mind. I took myself to a lonely beach and read some, which was a lovely experience. I even got my watercolour paints out and did some little abstract painting of the sea inspired byTillyer...clearly and obviously not in the same league but still enjoyable
‘as far as a man can shout across water
and his shout with blown back wings
loses its bearings and is never heard of again
and not her man can hear the crying waves
but his answer
dissolves in water like an oval of soap’
I will never forget the image of seals snuffling about in sleeping bags or cormorants being like eroded crows.
Anyway, if my year of poetry carries on this way I will be very happy
‘as far as a man can shout across water
and his shout with blown back wings
loses its bearings and is never heard of again
and not her man can hear the crying waves
but his answer
dissolves in water like an oval of soap’
I will never forget the image of seals snuffling about in sleeping bags or cormorants being like eroded crows.
Anyway, if my year of poetry carries on this way I will be very happy
August 10, 2022
This was an absolutely stunning piece of poetry! I adored Oswald’s written expression!
January 18, 2020
I read this in the Cape Poetry edition, which doesn't include Tillyer's watercolors; I didn't know that the poem was written to accompany the art until after I finished it.
For me, the work stands beautifully, if perhaps mysteriously, without additional visuals. The speakers and characters are sometimes easily identifiable (here Proteus, here Clymnestra, here Circe), and sometimes not, but everything, everything is being driven by these endless waves, the birds over the water, the longing for the body to "hit the sea and finally understand itself/ his human-salt already at ease in the ocean-salt" in counterpoint to the fear of the "bottomless dusk down there pale black/ nameness and numbness as when unfolded after sleeping/ and your own dead foot has forgotten you..."
Oswald's choice not to use punctuation is gorgeous on its own and even more gorgeous when considering the endless motion of the sea, its inexhaustibility; how nothing ever stops there. The lines slur together as the characters sometimes do, everything running together as if the poet, stranded on the desert island, delirious and sweat-blinded, were trying to scry the world in the ocean.
It's very hard to choose a favorite moment. I wouldn't call this excerpt from the poem characteristic of the whole book as it's perhaps a bit more sharp-edged than the average page, but Oswald's gorgeous crafting of metaphor and scene are so on-point here that I can't resist it:
In which a spirit leaning languorously from a porthole
poured stillness over the sea like a jug of milk
and there were bones everywhere and feathered people
stood singing on the stones on rickety thin legs
with tilted chins and pressed flat wings
For me, the work stands beautifully, if perhaps mysteriously, without additional visuals. The speakers and characters are sometimes easily identifiable (here Proteus, here Clymnestra, here Circe), and sometimes not, but everything, everything is being driven by these endless waves, the birds over the water, the longing for the body to "hit the sea and finally understand itself/ his human-salt already at ease in the ocean-salt" in counterpoint to the fear of the "bottomless dusk down there pale black/ nameness and numbness as when unfolded after sleeping/ and your own dead foot has forgotten you..."
Oswald's choice not to use punctuation is gorgeous on its own and even more gorgeous when considering the endless motion of the sea, its inexhaustibility; how nothing ever stops there. The lines slur together as the characters sometimes do, everything running together as if the poet, stranded on the desert island, delirious and sweat-blinded, were trying to scry the world in the ocean.
It's very hard to choose a favorite moment. I wouldn't call this excerpt from the poem characteristic of the whole book as it's perhaps a bit more sharp-edged than the average page, but Oswald's gorgeous crafting of metaphor and scene are so on-point here that I can't resist it:
In which a spirit leaning languorously from a porthole
poured stillness over the sea like a jug of milk
and there were bones everywhere and feathered people
stood singing on the stones on rickety thin legs
with tilted chins and pressed flat wings
August 8, 2025
Jeg var så håpefull, for samlingen er oversatt til norsk ved Paal-Helge Haugen, og hans tekster liker jeg virkelig. Oswald not so much. For fjernt og lite håndfast, for spesielt uten jeg fant noen interessant(e) knagg(er) jeg kunne hekte tekstene på. Smaken er som baken, delt.
March 5, 2022
so good so sexy thank you eilidh!!
March 14, 2021
How does it start the sea has endless beginnings
Set against a Homeric background (when Agamemnon left for Troy, he asked a poet to watch his wife for him, but Aegisteus rowed him to an island and left him there), Nobody is an ode to the sea and its many faces, the relentless sea where myths are born. Voices intermingle - that of Clytemnestra, Calypso, Icarus, but also sailors, nameless wanderers - not always identifiably so, so that the reader becomes lost in an ocean of voices, a sea of words. What a moving journey!
This beautiful poem has rightfully earned its place on my highly treasured 'water and sea' bookshelf!
one person has the character of dust
another has an arrow for a soul
but their stories all end
somewhere
in the sea
Set against a Homeric background (when Agamemnon left for Troy, he asked a poet to watch his wife for him, but Aegisteus rowed him to an island and left him there), Nobody is an ode to the sea and its many faces, the relentless sea where myths are born. Voices intermingle - that of Clytemnestra, Calypso, Icarus, but also sailors, nameless wanderers - not always identifiably so, so that the reader becomes lost in an ocean of voices, a sea of words. What a moving journey!
This beautiful poem has rightfully earned its place on my highly treasured 'water and sea' bookshelf!
one person has the character of dust
another has an arrow for a soul
but their stories all end
somewhere
in the sea
January 22, 2023
A nice and moody short poem. I was hoping this would be as impressive as Memorial, but it's hard to beat something that good. This is much shorter and even more vague so unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations, but it's still pretty good. Oswald has a really unique way with poetry that fuses the modern with the tones of Homer. Definitely worth a read if you like her poetry.
Incidentally, I hadn't read up on this book but discovered that the poems were originally commissioned to match some pretty cool abstract art. I like the conceit behind them, but the narrative structure is still very loose.
10/10 style points, but Memorial remains king.
Incidentally, I hadn't read up on this book but discovered that the poems were originally commissioned to match some pretty cool abstract art. I like the conceit behind them, but the narrative structure is still very loose.
10/10 style points, but Memorial remains king.
August 8, 2026
3,5 tähteä.
&
"mutta suru on niin vanhaa että sen aihe on mieltä vailla
availee silmiään eikä näe mitään
ulvoo ulvoo eikä kuule mitään"
&
"hyvin tässä käy nainen ajatteli kun vain hymyilen
enkä mainitse verta kynsissäni silloin mikään ei
päästä heikkoutta ulos näiden terävien hammaspaalujen välistä
ei edes murhattu viime henkäyksellään
ei edes vääjäämättömyys saa minusta vihiä
vai saakohan"
December 17, 2021
I am not intelligent and literate enough to fully appreciate this collection. I know Greek mythology fairly well and have read Odyssey (that has to a large extent inspired this cycle of poems), but I can tell that I missed a host of references. But there was a lot to enjoy here even without 'getting' every single thing.
Read
November 3, 2024Mind still staring out to sea
December 20, 2019
I like Alice Oswald's poetry. The sublimity of/in her language adds to the surreality of the imagery she evokes. 'Nobody' is quintessentially Oswald, for seeping at its heart is a body of water. Her sea of words ebbs and flows, accordingly. There are some poignant moments, such as
'...and the clouds
bafflingly quiet as if the fact of floating
had taken some weight off their minds'
But one gets a deja vu-like feel. This is not to say that the collection is bad. It is breathtaking at places, but this is Oswald-territory, meaning the familiar must feel unfamiliar; in here, it feels alienated.
Also, Nobody reminds me of another poet's collection; Kenneth Steven's "A Song Among the Stones". People who liked Nobody should like Kenneth Steven's book.
'...and the clouds
bafflingly quiet as if the fact of floating
had taken some weight off their minds'
But one gets a deja vu-like feel. This is not to say that the collection is bad. It is breathtaking at places, but this is Oswald-territory, meaning the familiar must feel unfamiliar; in here, it feels alienated.
Also, Nobody reminds me of another poet's collection; Kenneth Steven's "A Song Among the Stones". People who liked Nobody should like Kenneth Steven's book.
July 25, 2021
'How does it start the sea has endless beginnings'
As stated in the blurb, this poetry collection "is like watching the ocean: a destabilising experience that becomes mesmeric, almost hallucinatory, as we slip our earthly moorings and follow the circling shoal of sea voices into a mesh of sound and light and water – fluid, abstract, and moving with the wash of waves."
I could honestly not put this into any better words. I was mesmerised reading the words that were on the page. Reading them out loud was another wonderful experience.
I could only imagine listening to someone else reading this and how much it would elevate the poetry and the story even more.
Absolutely beautiful.
As stated in the blurb, this poetry collection "is like watching the ocean: a destabilising experience that becomes mesmeric, almost hallucinatory, as we slip our earthly moorings and follow the circling shoal of sea voices into a mesh of sound and light and water – fluid, abstract, and moving with the wash of waves."
I could honestly not put this into any better words. I was mesmerised reading the words that were on the page. Reading them out loud was another wonderful experience.
I could only imagine listening to someone else reading this and how much it would elevate the poetry and the story even more.
Absolutely beautiful.
October 28, 2020
I know nothing about Greek gods or the Odyssey. This was still mesmerising. This is the kind of writing that just does something, makes me feel...something. I can’t describe it. The writing is so good, words cannot actually describe how it makes me feel. And because I know I’ve probably just skimmed the surface of how truly brilliant it is, it makes me love it more. Absolutely beautiful.
October 11, 2018
Visually stunning and emotive. If you're a painter I think it will inspire you as it did to me.
I'm a William Tillyer fan now!
I'm a William Tillyer fan now!
September 1, 2022
Alice Oswald is now one of my "everything she breathes on is great" authors
June 19, 2026
‘what kind of rumour is beginning even now / under the waterlid she wonders there must be / hundreds of these broken and dropped-open mouths / sulking and full of silt on the seabed […] and maybe / even now a stranger is setting out / onto this disintegrating certainty this water […] and only our voices survived / like thistle-seed flying this way and that’
‘the water is in my thinking now’
‘poor man she says poor man it’s obvious / you can sniff it everywhere the shabby weirdness / of the sea-god leaning intimately over / and turning his shadows against you / poor morsel of cork you bob about / throwaway in all this what is it grief grief grief / but this grief is so old its matter has lost its mind’
‘out through their back-lit flesh they fly / into the blue of amnesia’
‘not every sound / is a voice not every breath is a self / but anything / knocked by a sudden blow / has the same unspecified shrillness oh I / feel like a glued fly giving up and standing up and / time and again stuck in the same pain if only / my foot could move my thought / and think of a cure but my thoughts can’t / lift their wings and every struggle / tangles me lower I wish I was / there or / there’
‘Fate has its needle in him nothing can stop him draining away’
//
poet laureate of formally realising the undulations of water — this feels like a more relaxed but perhaps more captivating incarnation of ‘Dart’
truly a joy to watch details of odysseus & penelope (along with ancillary greek figures like icarus, ariadne, persephone etc.) waft in & out of the various voices here, the way the poem ‘catches’ into more concrete elements of given stories before crashing away into the anonymity & enormity of water
there’s an affinity between this work & ‘tithonus: 46 minutes in the life of the dawn’ at the end of ‘Falling Awake’ — in both instances the voice(s) are fragmented, in ‘tithonus’ by the ephemerality of dawn, here by the paradoxical & elusive movements of the ocean; both are radical attempts at an open kind of mimesis
would heavily recommend oswald’s lecture from five years ago on homer, ted hughes, & her interpretation of the Epic: https://www.youtube.com/live/UvqcHX37...
‘the water is in my thinking now’
‘poor man she says poor man it’s obvious / you can sniff it everywhere the shabby weirdness / of the sea-god leaning intimately over / and turning his shadows against you / poor morsel of cork you bob about / throwaway in all this what is it grief grief grief / but this grief is so old its matter has lost its mind’
‘out through their back-lit flesh they fly / into the blue of amnesia’
‘not every sound / is a voice not every breath is a self / but anything / knocked by a sudden blow / has the same unspecified shrillness oh I / feel like a glued fly giving up and standing up and / time and again stuck in the same pain if only / my foot could move my thought / and think of a cure but my thoughts can’t / lift their wings and every struggle / tangles me lower I wish I was / there or / there’
‘Fate has its needle in him nothing can stop him draining away’
//
poet laureate of formally realising the undulations of water — this feels like a more relaxed but perhaps more captivating incarnation of ‘Dart’
truly a joy to watch details of odysseus & penelope (along with ancillary greek figures like icarus, ariadne, persephone etc.) waft in & out of the various voices here, the way the poem ‘catches’ into more concrete elements of given stories before crashing away into the anonymity & enormity of water
there’s an affinity between this work & ‘tithonus: 46 minutes in the life of the dawn’ at the end of ‘Falling Awake’ — in both instances the voice(s) are fragmented, in ‘tithonus’ by the ephemerality of dawn, here by the paradoxical & elusive movements of the ocean; both are radical attempts at an open kind of mimesis
would heavily recommend oswald’s lecture from five years ago on homer, ted hughes, & her interpretation of the Epic: https://www.youtube.com/live/UvqcHX37...
June 4, 2024
from Nobody
or is it only the hours on their rounds
thinking of the tides by turns
twelve white-collar workers
who manage the schedules of water
opening and shutting the mussel shells and adjusting
from black to turquoise the shining sea-lights
so that the sun sinking through bladderwrack
into interminable aquarium
finds even far down there are white
stones (5)
[...]
Small geometric figure
lost inside colour
he keeps wading out then back but it is
bottomless dusk down there pale black
nameless and numbness as when unfolding after sleeping
and your own dead foot has forgotten you
as if I waded inward
thirty yards from the surface of myself
but it's not myself it's just dark purple
it's not my feet it is the hours that move
if only the birds had subtitles if only by staring
I could draw some of those directions into my mind (8)
[...]
That goddess pierced by clear-sightedness
falling out of the air as winged and sudden as luck
like flicking a light-switch
flash
in the dark of these words she stood here
just a minute ago dead but alive in man's clothes saying
stranger weeping without stopping
cutting off the conversations of those who have a right to be frivolous
it is human to have a name but you seem unsolid somehow
almost too porous to be human I would say
some terrible repetition has eaten into you
as water eats into metal this is what happens
whenever love is mentioned your whole heart liquefies
and the character of water stares out through your eyes
it's as if you were a woman maybe her mind wanders
but it's clear her flesh is damaged in some way
as she drops to her knees and cries and so begins
the simple mineral monologue of
water (63)
[...]
Who is it saying these things is it only the tide
passing like a rumour over the sea-floor or
who is it keeps silent
when somebody's ring on nobody's hand
sinks like an eye into darkness
and the wind drops
and the water roars itself speechless
who is it speaking she said
my friend
who is it watching me behind your eyelids (64)
or is it only the hours on their rounds
thinking of the tides by turns
twelve white-collar workers
who manage the schedules of water
opening and shutting the mussel shells and adjusting
from black to turquoise the shining sea-lights
so that the sun sinking through bladderwrack
into interminable aquarium
finds even far down there are white
stones (5)
[...]
Small geometric figure
lost inside colour
he keeps wading out then back but it is
bottomless dusk down there pale black
nameless and numbness as when unfolding after sleeping
and your own dead foot has forgotten you
as if I waded inward
thirty yards from the surface of myself
but it's not myself it's just dark purple
it's not my feet it is the hours that move
if only the birds had subtitles if only by staring
I could draw some of those directions into my mind (8)
[...]
That goddess pierced by clear-sightedness
falling out of the air as winged and sudden as luck
like flicking a light-switch
flash
in the dark of these words she stood here
just a minute ago dead but alive in man's clothes saying
stranger weeping without stopping
cutting off the conversations of those who have a right to be frivolous
it is human to have a name but you seem unsolid somehow
almost too porous to be human I would say
some terrible repetition has eaten into you
as water eats into metal this is what happens
whenever love is mentioned your whole heart liquefies
and the character of water stares out through your eyes
it's as if you were a woman maybe her mind wanders
but it's clear her flesh is damaged in some way
as she drops to her knees and cries and so begins
the simple mineral monologue of
water (63)
[...]
Who is it saying these things is it only the tide
passing like a rumour over the sea-floor or
who is it keeps silent
when somebody's ring on nobody's hand
sinks like an eye into darkness
and the wind drops
and the water roars itself speechless
who is it speaking she said
my friend
who is it watching me behind your eyelids (64)
June 29, 2020
Not what I was expecting, but still okay. I zoomed in on the key word “Odyssey” and that is my fault. I was expecting Alexander Pope, not Rupi Kaur. I like the concept of ‘Nobody’ but I had some issues with it. If you don’t like a complete lack of punctuation, occasional neglect of capital letters and a loose form of poetry, you won’t like this. It does feel very free flowing and “boundless”, like the sea, but it also feels less like an intentional poem and more like a stream of consciousness or a diary entry written in a time of heightened emotion. I personally don’t find that type of prose very impressive. I find it’s much easier to write that way and because it’s something like what I write I think of it as amateurish and unedited. When I was 12 I thought writing edgy poetry with no punctuation or capital letters was cool. It is not. The poem did achieve a great overall atmosphere despite its shortcomings, although certain decisions were confusing to me and took away from that atmosphere. The repeated use of the words “polythene” and “teenager” drew me out of the story and confused me. Why include stone bowls and containers, but also speak of plastic floating in the ocean? In an Ancient Greek context and setting, allusions to the modern day felt obtrusive and wrong and detracted from the reading experience.
The only other real problem I had with the book was that my ebook was terribly formatted and the starts of sentences and words were cut off on about a quarter of the pages and when you’re reading poetry, every word counts! That’s not a criticism of the author, though, that is the fault of the publisher.
The only other real problem I had with the book was that my ebook was terribly formatted and the starts of sentences and words were cut off on about a quarter of the pages and when you’re reading poetry, every word counts! That’s not a criticism of the author, though, that is the fault of the publisher.
January 25, 2025
"...How does it start the sea has endless beginnings..."
Despite its similarity in source material to Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad, NOBODY couldn't be more different in style, revising Homer as a hazy stream-of-consciousness poem meditating on the sea and identity. It's studded with Oswald's wonderfully imagined phrases—a man abandoned on an island is "as dry as an ashtray", the shadow of a cloud "goose-fleshed the sea"—and William Tillyer's abstract paintings. I liked Oswald's writing most when it recognisably reworked passages from myth, such as Odysseus' katabasis, the appearance of Leucothea, and particularly her description of the fall of Icarus. In contrast, I wasn't as fond of the more abstract sections of her verse, which (while beautiful) felt less narratively or stylistically distinctive.
Despite its similarity in source material to Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad, NOBODY couldn't be more different in style, revising Homer as a hazy stream-of-consciousness poem meditating on the sea and identity. It's studded with Oswald's wonderfully imagined phrases—a man abandoned on an island is "as dry as an ashtray", the shadow of a cloud "goose-fleshed the sea"—and William Tillyer's abstract paintings. I liked Oswald's writing most when it recognisably reworked passages from myth, such as Odysseus' katabasis, the appearance of Leucothea, and particularly her description of the fall of Icarus. In contrast, I wasn't as fond of the more abstract sections of her verse, which (while beautiful) felt less narratively or stylistically distinctive.
December 30, 2020
This is the second book of Alice Oswald's poetry that I have read. Like the first, "Memorial," this one is inspired by Homer. In this case, Oswald alludes to portions of the Odyssey. Sometimes it was clear to me what was going on in the poem, as for instance when Odysseus was rescued by Calypso. Other times, however, I couldn't figure out who was speaking or what was going on. Perhaps the ambiguity is tied into the theme of being "Nobody," which in Oswald's poem seems to have a deeper resonance than the trick Odysseus pulls on the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer's original.
I suspect this book would yield deeper riches on further study. I would also be very interested to see the artwork that the poems originally accompanied, which might illuminate the meaning as well. Regardless, it seems that a re-reading is in order sometime soon. Fortunately, the book is short and can probably be read in one sitting.
I suspect this book would yield deeper riches on further study. I would also be very interested to see the artwork that the poems originally accompanied, which might illuminate the meaning as well. Regardless, it seems that a re-reading is in order sometime soon. Fortunately, the book is short and can probably be read in one sitting.
May 17, 2023
This review is for the edition with the poetry only, not the art.
I guess part of my disappointment is that I thought this book would be something else--given that it's based on The Odyssey and titled Nobody, I thought it was a reference to the name Odysseus gave Polyphemus. Instead, this book is about the poet Agamemnon sent to spy on Clytemnestra, who was then abandoned on an island by Aegisthus.
Perhaps the poetry would have meant more alongside the art by William Tillyer; i.e., how this poem was originally published. But standing alone...I guess I just didn't get it? The poet uses words like polystyrene, aeroplane, etc., and, well, this flew over my head for sure. Some of it seems like a generic stranded-on-an-island fare; only parts of it are relevant to The Odyssey.
I guess part of my disappointment is that I thought this book would be something else--given that it's based on The Odyssey and titled Nobody, I thought it was a reference to the name Odysseus gave Polyphemus. Instead, this book is about the poet Agamemnon sent to spy on Clytemnestra, who was then abandoned on an island by Aegisthus.
Perhaps the poetry would have meant more alongside the art by William Tillyer; i.e., how this poem was originally published. But standing alone...I guess I just didn't get it? The poet uses words like polystyrene, aeroplane, etc., and, well, this flew over my head for sure. Some of it seems like a generic stranded-on-an-island fare; only parts of it are relevant to The Odyssey.
November 25, 2020
A glorious, subtle, elliptical evocation of Homer's The Odyssey, Oswald draws on episodes and voices characters from that epic poem, layering loss and desire, danger and fate, tidally across the course of Nobody. Is it a single poem or a collection of poems and poem fragments? In a sense, it is both as images emerge and fracture like light coursing off wave-tops and as long slow tidal currents pull us deeper into this myth-infused seascape.
I'll be re-reading this for sure.
I'll be re-reading this for sure.
January 4, 2023
Bought the Cape Poetry edition of 2019. Simply amazing poem. Πως νιώθεις όταν βυθιζεσαι στη θάλασσα, στους μύθους, τα χρώματα και τα πλάσματα της ; Nobody
"Let me tell you what the sea does
to those who live by it first it shrinks then it
hardens and simplifies and half-buries us
and sometimes you find us shivering in museums
with tilted feet so that all we can do is to lie flat
our colourful suffering faces watered away
we who threw fish-lines into these waves
and steadied our weight in mastless longboats
and breathed in and out the very winds that wrecked us"-Alice Oswald, Nobody, Cape Poetry, 2019
"Let me tell you what the sea does
to those who live by it first it shrinks then it
hardens and simplifies and half-buries us
and sometimes you find us shivering in museums
with tilted feet so that all we can do is to lie flat
our colourful suffering faces watered away
we who threw fish-lines into these waves
and steadied our weight in mastless longboats
and breathed in and out the very winds that wrecked us"-Alice Oswald, Nobody, Cape Poetry, 2019
January 27, 2025
“a man is nobody underneath a big wave / his loneliness expands his hair floats out like seaweed / and when he surfaces his head full of green water / sitting alone on his raft in the middle of death”, writes Alice Oswald in her latest, a book-length poem called Nobody. Set in the mythological past, in the space between Agamemnon and Odysseus’ respective returns home from war, a poet sent to a desert island to die, a woman fated to be unfaithful; Oswald describes it as being something fragmented by wind and sea, and it certainly is, wandering to and fro but also coming back to waves. An incredible follow-up to Falling Awake.
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