Water
The body of freshwater as a recurring image across Taylor's writing - the lake as pastoral refuge or scenic backdrop, the swimming pool as bounded play, the flood as transformative current, and the elemental "I am water" figure where the speaker is rendered as the medium itself. Across the catalogue water imagery activates in several registers: freshwater stillness (the lake as remove from the world or as the place where the poetry was made), bounded play (the pool as site of intimacy, summer transgression, or surrender), overwhelming current (the flood as the deluge the speaker chooses to be carried by), and the speaker-as-element figure (water as the medium of yielding to the lover's arrival). Distinct from the sea (the catalogue's separate figure for salt, ship, shore, and oceanic depth) and from drowning (the interior experience of being consumed by water), this motif holds the freshwater body itself and the elemental figure it generates.
Water carries the doubled charge of refuge and yielding - the freshwater body marks a space set apart from the world, and the elemental figure registers the speaker's own state as fluid, taking the shape of what enters her. At the lake the register most often inherits the Romantic literary-historical charge associated with The Lakes - water as the place artists retreat to in order to recover what the world has cost them, and the lineage that the speaker asks to be admitted to when she invokes the geography. At the pool the register carries bounded freshwater play, often paired with surrender or seasonal transgression (the iced-over winter pool, the balcony jump, the swim past where feet can touch). At the flood the register carries overwhelming current the speaker chooses to be carried by, often as the act of letting go of what the relationship was. The speaker-as-water figure marks the moment when resistance ends and the speaker becomes the medium itself.
Appears in 11 songs
“Take me to the Lakes where all the poets went to die”
The Lakes function as the song's organising image, the literary-historical refuge the speaker asks to be taken to, and the geography against which the modernity she is fleeing (the hunters with cell phones, the namedropping sleaze) is implicitly measured.
“while I bathe in cliffside pools”
The cliffside pool extends The Lakes' refuge register to the speaker's own body, bathing in remote freshwater as physical inhabitation of the withdrawal the song proposes.
“Long limbs and frozen swims You'd always go past where our feet could touch”
The frozen swims serve as the vehicle for Marjorie's life lessons, bravery, daring, willingness to go into uncomfortable territory. Going past where feet could touch demonstrates the grandmother's courage and her role as guide.
“Running like water, I”
Water as the medium of memory's flow and James's departure, 'running like water' captures both the unstoppable quality of his leaving and the river-like flow of Betty's memories.
“Do you remember, we were sitting there by the water?”
“Do you remember all the city lights on the water?”
“You said, 'I remember how we felt sitting by the water'”
“Do you remember, we were sitting there by the water?”
“Do you remember all the city lights on the water?”
“You said, 'I remember how we felt sitting by the water'”
“We used to watch the sun go down on the boats in the water”
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
“Feet in the swing over the creek”
“In the winter in the icy outdoor pool, when you jumped in first, I went in too”
“Jump into the pool from the balcony”
“The moon like a spotlight on the lake”