Shark Repellant

[tectak]

Shark Repellant is a poem I wrote while pondering the response to The Dragon Down the Hall submitted some time ago in the Mild Critique forum.

Shark Repellant
fim 9/5/13

They glide around right below the surfaceHi fim. "right below"? Is that "just below" or is "just below" below that? Maybe "barely below" would avoid the double-talk.
circling just beneath where poems submergeAgain, this is a cute thought but "beneath" a "submerged" depth is hard to fathom
savoring with wry anticipation
how they’ll dine on every word....but a very nice cameo...I like it a whole lot

Savaging chunks inattentive to meter,
severing stanzas deemed insignificant
remnants of poem-flesh pinched between razor sharp teeth
yet the attack does not relent.the "yet" carries no contradiction and is just a superflous filler. You could get much more out of this line with a little more astuteness.

Punctuation errors cleaved with surgical precision,
questionable grammar forcefully ripped
and swallowed with ruthless abandon
as the poem limply sinks to the depths."and" and "as" are not required. As there is no solid meter thus far it seems a little pointless to worry about it now

But lore exists among sailors
that a poem can reach the briny deep unscathedpunctuate
repellants exist that make a poem so unpalatable
even the most voracious sharks turn away.commenting on meter is not going to make this a worthy crit but what the hell...the whole thing is running away with three-legged gallops. Read it out loud to your dentist. If he stops work and listens it is fine by me.

Huddled and in hushed whispers
beneath masts that creak from wind-filled sail beneath AGAIN. We are in danger of becoming antipodean
salty wisdom is secretly circulated
that can enable a poem to submerge and prevail.submerge AGAIN. I am drowning in deep depths, right underneath, beneath submerged depths. Wordy but does not say a great deal that is relevant to the poem... I avoid saying it is not profound to avoid you sounding Maybe it is time to think about closure...

Survive the frenzied feeding
just beneath the surface’s splashbeneath again already
pass through the water stained red with poem-bloodThe metaphor is now hemorrhaging...the "red" is reduntant, too. I would try to find a way of suggesting that poem blood may be of an inky nature/colour. Poem blood-blue. Crit's pen-red
without suffering even a single gash."even" is redundant

“Make your poem just a bit longer,”
crusty voices quietly intone,crustaceous maybe?
“strive to use rhyme consistently
and the sharks leave your poem alone.”...not if you strive. Only if you succeed

“Choose words that describe your poems ideaspoem's
so its meaning is readily evident,period.This is a complete sentence
sharks are lured by obscurity,
without it it’ll have a safe descent.”You are getting tired. It shows. Very bad line. Quite a bad stanza.Rewrite, methinks

Legend holds some poems submerged for critiquesubmerged again.
peacefully rest on the ocean floor intact.
But only the crustiest of sailors know crustiest again
why the circling sharks didn’t brutally attack....sound of logs falling down the stairs.

Hi again, fim,
Sorry about the line by line but the poem was really eaten by its own subject matter rather than by me There is a convoluted (and I would love to believe, deliberate) irony in the piece...but no, it is unintentionally ironic and so fails. The idea is BRILLIANT. Some of the metaphors are worth baiting your hook for and having another cast...but I think this one wriggled free. So must I.
Very Best,
tectak