The Sargasso Sea Summary

From the very first line, the speaker associates the "femme" with the Sargasso Sea, and this turns out to be the beginning of an extended metaphor, as the woman's personality and interactions are consistently represented by sea imagery throughout the poem. The speaker never indicates that the woman herself has any real connection to or interest in the Sargasso
Sea. In fact, she seems to be a longtime resident of London. He might have come across this association because the Sargasso Sea is famous for collecting masses of seaweed and debris, thanks to the ocean currents surrounding it. The speaker seems to see the woman as having a similar, whirlpool-like nature in the way she collects "Ideas, old gossip," and "Strange spars of knowledge" (4-5). In line 1, the speaker establishes straight off the bat that the Sargasso Sea is a metaphor for the woman; for both the woman's mind and herself. In line 3, the "bright ships" described here symbolize the various visitors the woman has, the "Great minds" that seek her out (6) and leave her with ideas, gossip, and knowledge (4-5). In...