MMC Instructor Robin Beth Schaer Meditates on Loss and Hurricane Sandy and the Importance of a Strong Community

Illustration by Madzia Bryll, a fellow member of the crew.

For Marymount Manhattan College writing instructor Robin Beth Schaer, the storm offered a chance to dissect the experience of loss. On Monday, October 29th, the tall ship HMS Bounty sunk amid the storm off the coast of North Carolina, losing its captain and another crew member to the waves. Schaer, who previously worked as a deckhand aboard the Bounty, published an essay in the Paris Review on November 2nd about coping with loss and surrendering agency to the forces of nature.

In her elegy for her ship and captain, entitled “Falling Overboard,” Schaer describes the lessons she learned in her time aboard the Bounty, which was built in 1960 on an 18th-century design, in the context of the language of the sea, as well as the mentality of an interdependent community. 

“I slept deeply, trusting when I closed my eyes others were awake, on watch, keeping me safe, just as I had done for them. We were profoundly dependent on each other,” writes Schaer. She continues, “With that dependence came an admission of fragility.”

Schaer, a poet whose work has previously appeared in magazines ranging from Guernica to Denver Quarterly, capably dissects the relationship of communities to nature in a way that makes her unique loss an equivalent to the losses suffered by her peers and neighbors. 

In the context of the hurricane’s widespread damage, Schaer’s essay becomes a form of comfort – a justification of loss that illustrates the importance of reconciling oneself with nature and forming interpersonal dependencies, even with their attendant risks.

Although she learned the art of accepting risks during her time on Bounty, her experiences translate into her teaching at Marymount Manhattan College. 

“I love when students push towards things they find bewildering or strange – they’re thrilled when they make a discovery and push past their own resistance. It’s the same as on a ship,” Schaer says. “You think, ‘I can’t climb that mast; there’s no way I can survive at sea,’ but you push yourself. It’s not just a physical fear, but also intellectual.”

Beyond her own experiences aboard Bounty, Schaer also shares a family connection with the ship: her aunt and brother were also occasional sailors, as a cook and deckhand respectively. The depth of her connection with the boat is evident in her essay. Published a mere three days after the loss of the ship, its captain and a crew member, “Falling Overboard” demonstrates the urgent need to cope with tragedy – a factor underscored by her decision to write in prose rather than her usual verse.

“I didn’t want to carve away at the story until I transformed it into something else,” Schaer says. “I wanted to stay in that shattering instant, and prose allowed me to contain the urgency and heartbreak of watching the ship go down and waiting for news about the crew and Captain.”

For the Marymount Manhattan community, reading Schaer’s essay in the Paris Review is more than just a proud reminder of the College’s talented world-class faculty: it’s a productive meditation on what it means to wholeheartedly commit to a community, even while that community and its neighbors weather tragedy and loss. 

“Inside her hull was a home; between the crew was a family,” Schaer writes. “Now the ship is wrecked, but we are not stranded.” For Marymount Manhattan, New York City and its environs, the ship can stand in for Sandy’s landfall area, but, like Schaer and her crew, we are not stranded – as long as we remain interdependent members of a strong community.

Robin Beth Schaer, an American poet who teaches writing at Marymount Manhattan College, enjoys a broad publication history. Her work has appeared in issues of Tin House, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, The Awl, Barrow Street, and Washington Square. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University and worked as a deckhand aboard the Bounty before its loss amid Hurricane Sandy. She also teaches writing at Cooper Union. Follow her on Twitter: @RobinSchaer

Published: October 10, 2012