Ebb Tide and Undertow: Discussion of Following Sybil

A newcomer to poetry may wonder whether Following Sybil can be comprehended without detailed explanations of the personal references and the classical allusions contained in it. How familiar must the reader be with the personal life and interests of the poet to follow him? At first glance, such a demand may seem overwhelming to the novice. At second glance, however, it is no different from what a viewer of a collage by Picasso must bring to it, or a listener to Rachmaninoff s Symphonic Dances must bring to them, to appreciate the extent to which personal recollections, longings, and losses are reorganized into an aesthetic whole. This reorganization is akin to a self-analysis in which the artist works over and transforms some aspects of his or her past in the context of a current experience and thereby attempts to both master the past and transform the (re)experience of it in the present. With this perspective in mind, we proceed.

The title already alerts us to a central theme of the poem. The poet follows Sybil but she eludes him. The poet tries to make contact, but he is always “following,” never there. The poet tells the story of Sybil from the vantage point of having found a “stranger,” a new love. Unable to comfort Sybil in the terrors of her flashbacks of sexual abuse, he is, however, able to comfort his new love when she is terrified by a nightmare. Helping “her over that fear” tightened their bond. Love provides an antidote for symbolized terror, but is impotent when confronted with terror that has been lived and relived again and again.

Like an analysand associating in the safety of the analytic office, the poet looks back upon his pursuit of Sybil. Through her flashbacks, he tells the story of her as a victim of incest by