Cetacean

Peter Reading 1946 (Liverpool) – 2011



Out of Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, Sunday, early,
  our vessel, bow to stern, some sixty-three feet,
  to observe Blue Whales -and we did, off the Farallones.

  They were swimming slowly, and rose at a shallow angle
(they were grey as slate with white mottling, dorsals tiny and stubby,
  with broad flat heads one quarter their overall body-lengths).

They blew as soon as their heads began to break the surface.
  The blows were as straight and slim as upright columns
  rising to thirty feet in vertical sprays.

Then their heads disappeared underwater, and the lengthy, rolling
expanse of their backs hove into our view -about twenty feet longer
  than the vessel herself.

                                         And then the diminutive dorsals
showed briefly, after the blows had dispersed and the heads had gone under
            gone under

 

Then they arched their backs, then arched their tail stocks ready for diving.
            for diving.

Then the flukes were visible just before the creatures vanished,
  Slipping into the deep again, at a shallow angle.
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Submitted on July 25, 2020

Modified on May 02, 2023

49 sec read
107

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXB CAB BBB DEX BEE DD XC
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,055
Words 165
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2

Peter Reading

Peter Reading was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his choice of ugly subject matter, and use of classical metres. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry describes his verse as "strongly anti-romantic, disenchanted and usually satirical". Interviewed by Robert Potts, he described his work as a combination of "painstaking care" and "misanthropy". more…

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