Vanity,
I like this poem, so I'm going to be critical. But first I want to say that I like this poem, because I tend to like the "big issue" poems. For a while there was a movement in academia who apparently had heard enough of these. I want to talk about life and meaning. Where journalists shy away, and editors are merely political, poetry literally advises the Pope, the warlord, the anarchist, the doctor, the teacher, the father... I want poetry to be straining at the limits of literature. I want it often.
Okay. So this is definitely one of those poems.
I think you're having us think about the whales, and commenting on life a little bit. I think the whale "song" is a metaphor for human experiences which transcend language --but perhaps we're all so caught up in our own rhetoric and drama that we miss the beauty of the experience...
I'm right with you right up to the invisible countdown. I like all that. You've got it good and kicked off there.
"the measure of mortality" is little too overstated, you're kicking a dead horse. I mean you've already got it with the heartbeats and the pedometer. Also, the measure of mortality is probably a deeper concept, and I don't think you want to tell the reader to think deeply, but then occasionally gloss over important things. Call something larger "the measure of mortality."
I'm with you, thinking about how you'd rather be floating with the whales. I like the diction of "zero buoyancy."
"Nigh holy" is weird, because "Holy" means to be set apart, and think that this floating through "sargasso forests" is set apart. The whole whale experience is set apart or "holy." Get rid of "nigh." Also, the previous strength with your diction on "zero buoyancy" eclipses "holy" and musically, it sounds a little flat. The weight is not on holiness. You need a turn in diction to say it with its own music.
"The silence between notes is utter" Here we're starting to really over-cook the metaphor. I think you can make it work, but you need a turn away from the metaphor for a few lines. I'd even break for a new stanza. Shift the tone. Speak plainly about something normal, "yesterday I got off work early. I stopped at the bank, and the post office, and the grocery store, and on the way home it started to rain. I parked by a meter and listened. Nothing but rain between passing cars. Then I got out..." That sort of thing. Don't get stuck in the metaphor. I mean I like extended metaphors, and I think The Collosus, by Sylvia Plath is a good example of one complete extended metaphor with no turns (as I am suggesting), but she's speaking in coded terms about her dad, and you're trying to get us to look at life. I think the power of this poem is aided by the "heel-toe heel-toe of heartbeats." You've got a lot going on in the ocean, give us more about life in the commercial west... Pass by and miss a few of life's "songs" here and there. Back to phrasing of this line switching the order of "utter silence" it leaves us hanging there. I think you're cheating away from the power of what you have established. It's easier to show us noise in the commerce and language of life --swinging away from the metaphor and into unvarnished narrative. In my example, I even felt the need to shorten, simplify, and grab a rhythm with the clauses.
"The song is all about giving." Oh you've got such space to work here. I mean think of the holidays where we measure ourselves more by what we give than what we receive. And then you've also got space to imagine what the whales are giving us.
"Like love, it heats the blood, water and salt" Now you're really pulling on the connections, this is tight. You're twisting the imagery together very well here. There is also a heavy biblical allusion, “For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree” (1 John 5:7–8). Here you really have some "holiness" without saying it. I really dig this part.
"the water laps up what you give, mamas milk pushes / sounds." We've got love, blood, water, and salt, and now milk? This is too glib, and it's mixing the metaphor too much. If the mode were more psychedelic it might work, but you've laid down some good connections here. You have a strong and successful metaphor doing some work --don't muddy it up. Just build a stronger connection to things in life. Point us at ourselves. If the milk is important, then give it its own space to be heard, felt.
"Electrons buzz" I think you need a little more work here. I'm guessing this is a referent to all the talk, fuzz, and advertising we might hear on the radio between pop-music songs. Our own songs are not utterly silent between the notes. There's something disingenuous about a DJ playing groovy tunes while talking over the first 30 seconds of the song, something disrespectful or unholy about commercials playing after Stevie Nicks singing about the edge of seventeen.
"with karma trailing out" you haven't given us anything about karma here, on either side of the metaphor. That seems too stray.
"through ripples that slowly fade..." this seems trite. The last four lines are rather wishy-washy. I like "Whatever words I had were useless" that goes with what you're doing. But the rest, and especially the last line --that's like what a narrator would say after reading your poem on Sesame Street.
Moving into the idea of being a whale and comparing it to life is interesting. Dean young "The Arts of Camouflage" is a good example of this sort of thing.
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelected...boardid=55&threadid=1391
Great effort here. I like where this is going. Lots to think about.
Rock the Casbah
