Madison Ryan

Mann

AP Lit & Comp - Block 4

December 2 2017

The Kelp Song

The world was an ocean, so full of life

In which every kelp, fish, and coral
Felt not yet any anger and strife

It is here that they once did meet,

a razor toothed shark and colorful algae,
And sprouted together a tower of kelp
Blossoming with stingers and anemone.

And though she stood taller

And newer than either of the two,
Her broad spongy stalks
Always swayed to the oceans blue.

The shark had kept moving, and didnt understand

And the algae watched in caution with a nurturing hand.

The tower of kelp kept her roots in one spot

And her eyes always facing upward.
The sun always warmed her water
But the kelp was unlike the fish who
Worshipped it and slept thereafter;
For instead the kelp fell in love with the moon.

Oh the songs the kelp could sing!

All day and all night she would go,
 Until her love came again, aglowing.
But when her green was finally lit
To match the stars in the sky,
She found herself quite transfixed,
Lost in her loves hypnotic eye.

Fish nuzzled into the nooks of the kelp, unaware of the epic love
That fueled the kelp to grow till her heart stretched into a grove.

The kelp is fundamentally permeable-

There is nothing in the world she cannot feel.
But to match her love for the moon, nothing has been able.

Take any child to see the sea,

And they will look up through the glass
At the sway of the oceans bejeweled trees.
They will have little choice to match the forests dance.

The kelp forests are massive, a power so untold

But still she follows her Lunas push and pull
Not from submission nor self hate,
But from a heartbeat no one will ever cull.

To try and parallel this cosmic love to human is a grievous sin,

For no mortal could ever comprehend the love the lovers were in.
 Artists Statement

This poem is a marriage between a love poem and an original myth of mine. The love
poem bit is inspired by a girl I really, really like, who I represented as the moon. I have always
connected myself emotionally and spiritually to the sea, most often kelp forests, so I represent
myself with the kelp. The original myth portion of it stems from my fascination with mythology
and fairy tales that I find become underrated in present day, and so I wanted to create one myself.
The two combined themselves in this poem to magnify the feelings I was trying to convey about
the inspiration of this poem and to provide more solid groundwork for a myth to emerge in a way
that was coherent and pleasing to a human reader.
The structure of the poem was supposed to reflect the perspective of the lines. Color also
played into this. Green, curving stanzas were intended to look like a kelp tree and also indicate
that the narration had become more personal to the speaker, the speakers environment, and the
speakers thoughts. Blue, rigid stanzas that never change alignment are the more grander scale
comments. Things that are said or happened after the fact, or are implied to be from a different
speaker. Notice the tonal shift where it loses its whimsical vibe and reads more as an observation
aside from the two main characters, the kelp and the moon.
I also adopted a loose rhyme scheme and meter. Though this poem would best be
classified as free form (Its all over the place, theres no real structure), I tried to keep a beat
going to make the poem feel more magical as a myth should be, and to read better as a flow, like
a current of the sea that would push or pull. The rhyme scheme in the green is very different
from the rhyme scheme in the blue, strengthening the tonal shift. I tried to make it so that the
blue and the green, if separated, could be standalone poems.
Between the first and second blue stanzas, where the green stanzas slope to the left, I
crafted these verses to be more complex than the first three and last three green stanzas. This is
because this section of the poem is meant to reflect more complex feelings and happenings. This
is when the kelp really fell for the moon, and she blossomed into something more - a transition
period from the beginning, where she was created by her primordial parents and then confused
them (this is also F/F so it doubles as a metaphor for how she was different in how she preferred
the feminine moon to the masculine sun) to the end, where she has settled into her
relationship and role, the moon having encouraged her to expand and become powerful (how the
girl I like inspired me to become a better person and build my self esteem).
Regarding the blue, the shark and algae represent my own parents, whom I feel are
represented blatantly enough that I wont have to elaborate. I was born very different from them,
as kelp was born different from the primordial ancestors who expected it to be something else
than what it became. The fish that nuzzle also represent the people who are completely oblivious
to this storm of emotion even though its happenings take center of kelps world. Talking to her,
Im often overcome with a feeling that I believe to be too big for human words to properly
describe, which plays into the cosmicness of the myth as well as the warning to human readers
to not belittle it by making it personal to them. Every world is enormous to the person it belongs
to; let it stay that way rather than risk a poor translation.
Structurally, the last three green stanzas and the first three are angle the same. I wanted a
return to form, a strong resolution. The kelp was created by the shark and algae, and then the
kelp was reborn again, now tied with the moon in essence. I wanted to end the poem as many
myths and legends do - with a panning out from the characters to the world beyond them, and
then a final line to hit the readers. They also have the same rhyme schemes for a stronger
parallel.
There is personification to help the reader pick out that this is not only just an abstract
legend, but something very personal. Algae does not have hands nor means of watching, yet it
does so anyway to support its child, features of a mother. The fact that a shark and some algae
had a child in the first place is a hint in itself. The kelp had eyes, meaning that she was watching
and feeling, yet no hands are mentioned, indicating a role different from a mother. This is further
noted when only the kelp and only the moon had eyes (only had eyes for each other). The
personifications act as hints towards the roles and characteristics of each character.
I decided to call it The Kelp Song based on a recommendation with a friend. Since the
poem itself is already structurally complex, a clean title would do best to balance it out.
However, calling it a song adds to the mythological connotations, as most old myths were sung.
Its also centric to the speaker as well. It is The Kelp song, not the Kelps song. The Kelp did not
sing this for herself, it only about her. The lack of possessiveness may also be an implication that
she could not possible sing it herself, abstracting the poem further from a story about two
specific people to a more general love story.