From the Wave

At first glance, the title “From the Wave” seems curious; the title almost implies the poem is a missive from a personified wave. Alternatively, it sounds like the speaker himself must be speaking from the wave. However, upon actually reviewing the poem, the reader sees that the unnamed speaker of the poem is clearly not riding the titular wave, nor is he the wave itself; instead, he is watching a group of surfers ride it (and is presumably watching from the beach). In reality, the “From” means that the “Wave” is the source, or cause, of both the action the poem describes (surfing) and the poem itself. In other words, the surfing is made possible by the wave—as is the poem, since the wave helped inspire the poem. Accordingly, throughout the poem, the speaker will identify with the surfers and draw subtle parallels between their surfing and his own writing process.

“From the Wave” is a formal poem because it employs meter and rhyme. It is written in four-line stanzas, or quatrains, of alternating tetrameter (four iambs per line) and dimeter (two feet per line). The quatrains also have an alternating rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN FOFO (See: Literary Devices). Just as the poem’s surfers are carefully, impeccably balanced on the wave they ride, the poem’s meter and rhyme scheme are precisely balanced. The tone of the poem is playful, delighted, and triumphant, but these emotions are evoked by the speaker’s description of the surfers’ poise and precision as they ride the wave, and by the poise and precision of the poem’s meter and rhyme, not by any direct reference to the speaker and his feelings—in fact, there is no single “I,” “me,” or “my” in the poem.

In the first stanza, the speaker notes that the titular wave “mounts” (Line 1). The word “mounts” evokes mountains and certain animals—specifically steeds, who are mounted and ridden. Thus, the word suggests that the wave is both a natural phenomenon and a live animal. This wave finds further complexity in its characterization as a “concave wall” (Line 1). Most walls aren’t concave, or curved; most walls are flat, but the word “wall” suggests the size of the wave—taller than humans, perhaps the size of a free-standing building. Additionally, the wave is ribboned with sunlight, or “[d]own-ribbed with shine” (Line 2). The word “ribbed,” with its skeletal connotation, further links the wave with a living being. As the first stanza grows in length, the wave grows in height: “building tall / [i]ts steep incline” (Lines 3-4).

The second stanza introduces the surfers. Yet it isn’t clear that they are surfers until the second line of the second stanza. On the first line of this stanza, the surfers are only referred to as “their.” The second stanza reads in full:

Then from their hiding rise to sight

Black shapes on boards

Bearing before the fringe of white

It mottles towards (Lines 5-8).

The surfers are, in effect, hidden on the second stanza’s first line (a longer line), then they emerge as surfers on the second line (a shorter line). One critic writes, “[T]he ‘black shapes’ [Line 6] of the surfers are tucked, as a phrase, in the curl of the stanza—a concrete effect—the typographical overhang extending past the surfers like a wave crest” (Weiner, Joshua. “Thom Gunn: ‘From the Wave.’” Poetry Foundation). Content and form are thus further intertwined: The meter of the poem imitates the rise and swell of a wave, and the poem introduces the surfers in a way that mimics how real surfers ride under crests.

The third stanza continues the tacit analogy between surfing and poem writing. It describes how the surfers’ “pale feet curl” (Line 9) on their boards, but this literal description has an analogical dimension; the word feet presents wordplay, evoking a poem’s metrical feet. Moreover, the surfers balance “[w]ith a learn’d skill” (Line 10). If this line were referring only to surfing, then practiced would be more natural diction than “learn’d,” but the speaker is thinking about both the act of surfing and the act of writing a poem at once. The third stanza concludes: “It is the wave they imitate / [k]eeps them so still” (Lines 11-12). On the surface, this describes the surfers imitating the wave—but the poem’s alternating rhyme scheme and alternating meter also imitate the rise and fall of a wave. Like the stanza’s earlier lines, these closing lines evoke both the act of surfing and the act of writing the poem.

In the fourth stanza, the surfers’ “marbling bodies” (Line 13) are described as “[h]alf wave, half men” (Line 14). The word “marbling” suggests that each surfer is like a marble statue, and the “[h]alf wave, half men” suggests each surfer is like a centaur, a mythical creature that is half horse, half man; recall that earlier, the word “mount” (Line 1) implied a comparison between the wave and a horse. Many poems have been written about ancient Greek statues and ancient Greek myths, and the opening lines of the fourth stanza recall such tropes to lend the surfers an implicit aura of art and myth. Next, the surfers’ image is further complicated when their “marbling” and centaur-like bodies are “[g]rafted” (Line 15) to their boards, seemingly “by feet of foam” (Line 15). This diction adds another element of living nature: Because plants are “[g]rafted,” this word suggests that, as well as art and myth, the surfers are a part of nature. The phrase “feet of foam” further unifies the surfers with the wave they ride—and in the fourth stanza, the surfers’ feet can no longer be distinguished from the foamy crest. This is also true of the poem’s feet.

In the fifth stanza, the speaker writes of the surfers on the wave: “Balance is triumph in this place, / Triumph possession” (Lines 19-20). This is a near-chiastic construction: “Balance is triumph […] / Triumph possession” (chiasmus is a literary device wherein words, ideas, or syntactic patterns are repeated in reverse). It directly recalls a chiastic phrase from John Keats’ famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Poetry Foundation, Line 49). While Keats’s speaker meditates on a still and silent aesthetic object (an urn), Gunn’s speaker contemplates bodies in motion (the surfers on the wave). Nonetheless, by alluding to Keats, the speaker again suggests the surfers are like a work of art and draws yet another parallel between the surfers riding the wave and himself writing the poem.

The sixth stanza describes the wave as a “mindless heave” (Line 21) and a “fluid shelf” (Line 22). These two contradictory descriptions—the first rough and heavy, the second tidy and domestic—further complicate the descriptions of the wave from the first stanza, which compared the wave to a natural force, an animal, and a building (Lines 1-4). The wave “[b]reaks” (Line 23) in the sixth stanza, “falls and, slowed, / [l]oses itself” (Lines 23-24). This break is not simply an oceanic phenomenon; it is a loss of identity, a loss of self. Moreover, as the wave breaks, the line’s iambic tetrameter also falls apart. The meter, too, loses itself.

In the seventh stanza, the surfers also “[l]oosen” (Line 26). Additionally, their bodies in their wetsuits are described as “sheathed” and “slick as seals” (Line 25). This is another complex description, as the word “sheathed” suggests a sharp weapon, like a sword, and the comparison to seals suggests a blubbery animal.

In the final stanza, the surfers “paddle” (Line 29) and “splash” (Line 30) in the “shallows” (Line 29): “Then all swim out to wait until / [t]he right waves gather again” (Lines 31-32). This anticipation resembles how poets wait for their next inspiration or creative occasion.