Next to the opening poem of the chapbook titled Self-Portrait As A Sinking Ship, there is a looming silhouette, etched in a black so deeply dark, it’s borderline terrifying. At the very base of the shadow, there is an outline of a ship, careening towards the bottom of the page, seeming as though it’s plunging through a sea of stars.
It raises the question: How can something so heavenly be found in something that appears so ominous? Philadelphia-based poet Erica Abbott seeks to answer this question and deliver a sliver of solace to herself, and to her audience, through her writing in this chapbook.
Intimate and sensitive issues like her struggle with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, among many more, are at the heart of Abbott’s writing. She prefaces the heavy content that is to follow the first poem by outlining 10 aspects of mental illness that readers should be aware of, all exceptionally insightful reminders to help guide her audience through her work. A particular assertion from the poet stands out amongst the others, and it draws light to the fact that an individual suffering from a mental illness may not even consciously register their fight with it in the first place, making the diagnosis, and plan of action to conquer it, all the more perplexing.
From the title, it is clear that water will serve as a recurring theme within the poems. As can be seen throughout centuries of literature, water is associated with many concepts, from destruction and power to healing and rejuvenation. Abbott utilizes water as a dual-natured, overarching symbol for both darkness and hope.
In her poem, “A Year of Drowning,” Abbott likens depression to one’s inability to tread water. In this poem, she uses fruits to symbolize her happiness and success, and she writes about how they have rotted; all she has left to show for her failures are her tears. Depression seizes her entire body, and in ascending letters, she likens the feeling to drowning in rising waters.
In a subsequent poem, presumably the inspiration for the collection’s title, “Self-Portrait As A Sinking Ship,” Abbott portrays herself as a chaotic, capsizing vessel that was destined for a tragically truncated voyage. In five stanzas, she narrates how her demise was inevitable, and while everyone else who may have stood to lose anything by remaining in her life had deserted her, she was still sending out final, frantic distress signals, hoping that someone may come to rescue her. She writes,
No distress signals were ever responded to.
But somehow, against all odds,
I am still staying afloat.
Mental illnesses present themselves in many ways, sometimes consuming and persistent. Abbott captures the grueling, prolonged ruts of hopelessness and inadequacy associated with her personal demons. In her poem, “Fever Pitch,” she asks
I write…
But will it ever be enough? Will it ever be?
Will it ever?
Will I?
The voice in her head is relentless, and it’s not in hers alone; it’s in all of our minds, and it’s convincing us all of the same thing, that perhaps there is no salvation, no happy ending for us. The eerie, open-ended query concludes this poem, and several others, on an unsettling note, serving as a chilling observation that sometimes our worst enemies are the ones we see in the mirror every morning.
Abbott intertwines her poems with several accounts of her relationships and personal losses, such as the bond she shared with her childhood best friend in “St. Ends, Patron Saint of Ending.” In this poem, Abbott details the painstaking way in which she watched herself drift away from her adolescent partner in crime. Decades have passed, yet lingering “what if’s” nag away at her as she can’t help but wonder how different their shared fate may have been had she just picked “up the phone [to] say hello – how have you been?” One memento of their friendship remains, the other half of a two-piece necklace: the “st ends” to a “best friends” heart necklace. A clever yet tearjerker of a play on words.
In the second half of the book, “Hope”, Abbott shifts her poetic tone to a more hopeful one, as if to comfort her readers by telling them that “this too, shall pass”. Uplifting lines help to convey a sense of impending contentment, and can be seen in poems like “Sixty Percent Water.”
You are a life-sustaining force,
and you will rebuild yourself. You
hold more than enough power
to make it happen.
Abbott acknowledges that there will be days when she feels “more question mark than woman”, purposeless and lost, a sentiment that no doubt many of her readers would share. But she circles back around with a counterargument that
You may look for a million reasons to go,
but the Earth needs you here for no one
can tell a story quite like the person who lived it.
There’s something beautiful about the way no two interpretations of a singular story are ever the same, and Abbott spends the final poems of her chapbook expanding on this idea. While abandonment and isolation are the central feelings in the first half of the book, humanity and its tangibility drive the second half. Abbott speaks in “Home” of how, in a city with towering skyscrapers and intimidating commotion, she stands tall and has found a way to thrive in a graveyard and nursery of dreams, letting the energies of all the people awaken her. In “Stories
On Our Skin,” she establishes an elegant comparison between the pages of a book and the flesh of a human; they both tell stories, and she can’t help but ponder what hers tells to the casual, unsuspecting passerby.
The last poem appropriately rings in finality, as it turns the reader’s gaze to the starry skies above, in search of hope and freedom. Abbott walks through five methods by which her audience may stargaze in a world whose view of the night is clouded by light pollution. Each option becomes progressively more and more personal, until she makes the explicit statement that when you find the right person, you need look no further than their eyes to find the stars.
Erica Abbott’s chapbook Self-Portrait As A Sinking Ship is thought-provoking, melancholic, and revitalizing. It is a worthwhile read for those in need of genuine encouragement, and a compelling collection of poems for those looking for a soul-stirring journey.
Self-Portrait As A Sinking Ship
By Erica Abbott
Toho Publishing
Published November 11, 2020
47 pages
Pooja Balar is a junior in the BS+MD program at Drexel University and is also pursuing a certificate in Creative Writing and Publishing. She loves spending time with her dog, as well as dancing, playing the guitar, and boxing. She’s a Marvel enthusiast and a Netflix fanatic, and when she’s not studying, she’s uploading blog posts on her personal website.