03-20-2012, 08:58 AM
Mark, the voice here is confusing -- through the entire poem, until the last few lines, I was thinking that your voice was a wolf or mountain lion or something and the old man was one of those nice hermits who fed critters to stop them eating him 
Then I started thinking werewolf, because cannibal just doesn't fit. I didn't understand the dreadnaught thing (it's a ship in my head!) until I googled "dreadnought" -- I'm ok with that, I have remedied my ignorance. I think the biggest thing this suffers from is Too Much Information -- a lot of tell, not show, but the telling is all over the place and not coming anywhere near a straight line in my mind. Lots of adjectives that could go -- "thick mass", "specific detail", "incessant babbling", you get the picture. Trim away all the excess so the real poem isn't lost.
Then I started thinking werewolf, because cannibal just doesn't fit. I didn't understand the dreadnaught thing (it's a ship in my head!) until I googled "dreadnought" -- I'm ok with that, I have remedied my ignorance. I think the biggest thing this suffers from is Too Much Information -- a lot of tell, not show, but the telling is all over the place and not coming anywhere near a straight line in my mind. Lots of adjectives that could go -- "thick mass", "specific detail", "incessant babbling", you get the picture. Trim away all the excess so the real poem isn't lost.
It could be worse