Blood in the Water

[Jack of Hearts]

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[Jack of Hearts]

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[Bar22do]

You're oceanic, Jack, have you been listening to the sirens' song of late? Maybe like Odysseus you should fasten yourself to the mast not to fall under their spell (blades...) - - - words (swords...) can be dangerous, can't they. But yours are so expressive, vivid. Thanks a lot.

PS. I just wondered about "says here" in your first, could you elucidate?

Best of all to you and thank you for sharing, Bar

[Hawkman]

Hi Jack. I like the idea behind 'Blood in the Water' but I don't feel it's quite there yet. The idea of words like sharks is strong but although sharks may be more cartelige than bone, the connotations of "spineless" as week or cowardly, don't really fit the image of such predatory words. I'm not keen on a "cloud of blood swirling up like petals in bloom". To me the image is at varience with the percieved intent, as petals and flowers feel too soft for the edginess of blood, which looks more like smoke in water. I'd cut the stanza break between S2 and 3, which stalls the thought. Lastly, "finest flaw" is too contradictory to work well, I think.

"Hit, a Woman" is really good as is. The only thing I'd suggest here is to combine the first line with the 2nd stanza and take out the full stop to make it one sentence.

Live and be well - H

[hillwalker]

A couple of goodies, Jack. I agree that 'Blood in the Water' could be tightened up so the metaphors are more in keeping with the subtext. But overall a great start to 2012.

H

[billl]

I think there is an intended presentation of opposites in the first one. Something like this can end up being what we make it, and maybe I have an overactive imagination--but when I read the first one, I thought it was about being "mealy-mouthed" almost. Well, that's an exagerration, perhaps, maybe an extreme end of the spectrum here. But it captures the negative side I want to highlight in a clear way--too clear to be accurate, though, sorry.

A better way of describing my read would be to say that I'm seeing a back-and-forth going on about the beauty and power of indirect (evasive, even) language. Sometimes when we find the right words for something, in a poem or in life, those words might not be direct. They might be circling the point, letting the meaning emerge (bloom) in a fuller personal understanding than would be achieved by simply laying out the blunt final message. The idea is stalked and pointed to. I think this is an effect common to poetry, and it might also be fair to say that an epiphany at the end of a short story, for example, is achieved in the same manner.

This sort of effect can be overdone, of course (e.g. mealy-mouthed speech, or grinding dissimulation, etc.) and so the last three lines can be read in more than one way. Is "finest flaw" good or bad? I'd say it depends on if the poem/speech in question were good or bad. I'm thinking the brief "confusion" that this poem created for me was pretty good, for what it ended up expressing.

[qimissung]

I love your two poems, the first so blood-thirsty and painterly, and the second os tough and so modern.

I like the first poem best and love the last three lines of the first poem after all the metaphors. My only quibble would be the first image of the sharks followed by the word "spineless": if the words are sharks, how can they be spineless?

[WolfLarsen]

I liked how in the first poem at the very beginning you turned the words into sharks or something like that. It's like the words were swimming in the white ocean of the page.

[smerdyakov]

The first poem's pretty interesting, J.
Aquamarine jewel is a bit of a sore thumb though, in that I fail to see how it relates, literally or metaphorically, to the rest of the poem.

Sorry, but the second one was way too esoteric for my brain to get any kind of purchase on it. I would be lying to you if I said I liked it.