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140,681 Literary Works • 673,591 Reviews
I love this! It's such a beautiful poem and it flows together so well.
Firstly I love the way that the poem addresses the reader. It's so common that poems such as this are written in first person and it's really refreshing to see one that isn't.
The imagery and story to this poem was fantastic. There really isn't anything I can falt!
I'm not so sure about the final line, however. Depending on the shark, most sharks can only 'sink' backwards. And that doesn't really kill them. In fact, the majority of sharks can't swim backwards at all and even if they could it's quite unlikely that they will die unless they could do it for an extremely long time. Sinking backwards is, for a shark, rether like holding your breath. It can be done, not forever, but it is possible to do it without dieing.
But, sorry, I'm rambling. The last line really has the shock impact and I love the fact that you ended the poem on the word 'die'. It really just helps the whole thing ring in my ears.
Other than what I've said, there really isn't anything I can falt about this poem. It's very beautiful, thank you!
Royal here for a review! But it'll be a quick one, because there's so little to critique. I love the way this flows, I love the structure you chose, and I love that every metaphor is about the ocean, because I grew up near one.
I think I would like to understand more about what exactly is going on. To me, it sounds like the subject of the poem is suffering from mental illness, but it's not clear. I'm not sure if you want it to be clear, or if somebody smarter than me can more clearly tell what all the metaphors are pointing to. For me, the imagery of the healing gills was what really gave it away. If you consider revising this, which honestly I don't think you need to, but if you consider it, I would think about expanding that feeling of suffocation that the subject must be feeling in her struggle with mental illness and/or simply being out of the water.
The ending was deliciously ambiguous- what happened between the subject and the speaker to make the speaker use the words "knives," and make the subject walk away? What is the relevance of the shark? Is the shark the subject or the speaker? Does that portend the subject's demise?
Don't answer any of those questions, whatever you do, if you decide to revisit this. I loved not knowing. I loved sitting here, thinking about it. I loved thinking about how it made me sit here and think about it.
This was a beautiful, haunting piece. I feel like it's the kind of poem I'll keep going back to in my mind's eye-- the kelp for hair and sandy skin. There is no line or word out of place, there is no moment of clunkiness or even a hint of verbosity. This was wonderfully crafted.