A Jelly-Fish

The poem’s opening description of the jellyfish is at once distinct and deliberately elusive: “Visible, invisible / A fluctuating charm / An amber-colored amethyst / inhabits it; your arm.” (Lines 1-4). What is immediately apparent in these lines, as much as the language itself, is their rhythmic cadence, characteristic of Emily Dickinson in a poem such as “Hope is The Thing With Feathers.” However, while the words seem chosen for their seductive aural qualities, they observe nature with an almost documentary precision. They suggest the human eye perceiving a jellyfish in water, perhaps with light shining through its translucent body, making it appear “[v]isible” (Line 1) one moment and gone the next. The metaphor “Fluctuating charm” (Line 2) emphasizes the seductive effect of this uncertainty on the observer. As the poem switches to another metaphor, the “amber-colored amethyst” (Line 3) suggests the color of the creature, and its desirability, like a precious stone. The following line: “inhabits it; your arm” (Line 4) hints at a kind of symbiosis taking place between jellyfish and the observer, who, through the use of the second person, could be anyone. Despite the semicolon, both the appearance of the words on the page and the metrical pattern (“arm” [Line 4] rhyming with “charm” [Line 2]) encourages the reader—at least for a second—to view this arm as the thing “inhabit[ed]” (Line 4).

Moore then employs enjambement in Line 5 to dispel this illusion, separating the quivering, floating jellyfish from the arm that “Approaches, and / It opens and / It closes” (Lines 5-7). The repetition of the object pronoun “It,” which in total appears 10 times in the poem’s 22 short lines, now clearly emphasizes the creature’s separateness, highlighted through contrast with the personal pronoun “You” (Line 8): “You have meant / To catch it” (Lines 8-9). These lines present a juxtaposition: The purely instinctive pulsing of the jellyfish is squared against the thwarted human desire “to catch it” (Line 9).  Human capacity to do harm to natural lifeforms is hinted at in the next line: “And it shrivels” (Line 11), with the word “shrivels” conveying a shrinking that is both naturalistic and suggestive of decay in other living things. “You abandon / Your intent” (Lines 12-13) then suggests a different human weakness in the form of a lack of conviction or determination. The second of the poem’s rhymes emphasize this human flaw: “intent” (Line 12) rhymes with the “meant” (Line 8) four lines earlier.

In a poem that has already shown an obsession with change and mutability, it is not extraordinary that the jellyfish should give this curious observer a second chance: “It opens and it / Closes and you / Reach for it—” (Lines 13-15). These words are an exact repetition of Lines 6-7, yet the altered position of “it” before the line break creates an even more tantalizing pause before the closing. In a similar vein, the enjambement before “Reach” (Line 15) evokes the momentary delay between thought and action. Here, Moore subtly undermines the view that the human observer is fundamentally different from the jellyfish. Instead, just like the creature, the human is governed by quickly changing desires and impulses that, to some other observer, might appear irrational and instinctive. The following three lines reinforce this idea of human inability to truly know and master the mysterious forces of nature and the oceans: “The blue / Surrounding it / Grows cloudy” (Lines 16-18). With tremendous economy, Moore evokes the image of the creature’s sudden movement, churning the previously clear water; the observer’s view destroyed by their own desire to touch. “[C]loudy” is distinct diction, suggesting an occlusion not just of the ocean but of the eye observing it, as if a cataract has been pulled across it. With the final two lines, “It floats away / From you” (Lines 19-20), Moore completes the last of the poem’s three strong rhymes, this one pairing with Line 16 (“The Blue”). This closing metrical and aural harmony, coupled with the diction “floats” (Line 19), mirrors the actions of the creature itself and emphasizes the effortlessness of its escape. Also, by ending on an image of the observer, the poem “A Jelly-Fish” suggests that its content has as much to say about ethical questions of human observation and interference as it does about the creature itself.