Alan Dugan’s Plague of Dead Sharks
I recently joined the information/ conversation board, SHARK-L, which does indeed cover almost everything having to do with sharks. I put out a request for anyone who might be familar with shark-themed poems. Maris Kazmers, who also lives in Lansing, responded with several suggestions, one of which is Alan Dugan's Plague of Dead Sharks.
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?
The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet
slough off, in spring, the dead rind of the shoes'
leather detention, the big toes' yellow horn
shines with a natural polish, and the whole
person seems to profit. The opposite appears
when dead sharks wash up along the beach
for no known reason. What is more built
for winning than the swept-back teeth,
water-finished fins, and pure bad eyes
these old, efficient forms of appetite
are dressed in? Yet it looks as if the sea
digested what it wished of them with viral ease
and threw up what was left to stink and dry.
If this shows how the sea approaches life
in its propensity to feed as animal entire,
then sharks are comforts, feet are terrified,
but they vacation in the mystery and why not?
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?:
what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back.
I like this poem, even if the poet refers to sharks in the same tired old cliche, focusing in on them being little more than old, efficient forms of appetite. Old, indeed. The poem is from Dugan's Poems Seven, new and complete poetry (2001). Robert Pinksy, writing a review in New York Times Book Review, says the following: "Logic and abstraction in these poems deflate moral poses and orations. In Plague of Dead Sharks, Dugan takes up the old idea of mutability, in an image that is both traditional and characteristic … The blunt, plain built / for winning has Dugan's eccentric, impatient economy, and his love for downright words of one syllable energizes and threw up what was left to stink and dry. In another kind of language, a pungent, Latinate precision, the poem considers the consuming sea's propensity to feed as animal entire. The willingness to generalize and generate logical finalities in this case expresses itself not in a moral summary but in a question and an Orphic statement: Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?: what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back. The outlandish punctuation, question mark followed by colon, indicates the way this resolution hovers between the elemental and the unknowable."
I suppose any shark poem is better than no shark poem. It will be interesting to see what poets will ever do with the subject matter if they can step away from their blinders/ fear/ what have you and write about the shark with a little more creativity.