AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Come on, Slammers.  Please help me fix the awful title?  The guy I took poetry class from suggested I call this something along the lines of "Aboard the Clipper Ship Mortality."  While I have the highest regard for his good judgement... how hokey and melodramatic is that?  Beating you over the head with Death before you've even read the poem?   

Anyway, I thought I'd share a quote with you.  " - aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. ... In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.  And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot." 

-- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Any thoughts on the numerous poems equating seafaring with the transition from life to death?

Thanks!

Wonderful imagery.  As for the title, I've never been very good at those myself, but you could just call it "Clipper Ship," or "Surviving the Clipper Ship," or "The Mortal Clipper Ship."

You have a great start to your poem.  The line breaks in the first stanza are beautiful.  I like how the breaks aren't where you would naturally expect them to fall, yet the lines still flow.  My favorite phrase in your poem is "joyously fighting" in the third stanza.  To me, these two words encapsulate the essence of your poem.  Perhaps this would be a good title or something similar to it.  I think your poem would be even better if you had more (or maybe different) descriptive words.  I would suggest playing with some adjectives and adverbs; changing just a few words can make a big difference. Another phrase I like is "bone-jarring thump."  These phrases really bring out the emotions and feeling in your poem.

The flow in your poem is generally very good, although the break between the first and second stanza bothered me.  It seemed abrupt.   At first the weather is sunny, but then all of a sudden sails are tearing.  I like the contrast between the sun and storm, but I felt it got too stormy too fast.  I feel your last line could be stronger also.  Really pack a punch or leave the reader thinking. 

If you are looking for more inspiration you should look at the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer": http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Sfr.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thanks, everybody!

I agree that the last line could be tweaked to make it more powerful.  Perhaps I'll put this one aside for awhile and come back to it with some amazing fresh insight.

Sylvia Plath's poems are generally too depressing for me -- reading her stuff is like chewing ice cream: it hurts my teeth.  But her poem "Channel Crossing" is worth a read: http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/channel.html.

Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" may be a tad more pertinent.  Amazing poem: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Crossing_Bar.htm.

I know this comment is rather late, but if I were titling this, and I didn't want the "Mortality" to be so apparent from the start, I would go to a translator, pick a few languages, and type in mortality until you find a foreign word that fits the poem's flow. That way, people will read the poem first, then, once they already know the ending, they will look up the word. Title stuff aside, the imagery makes what could be a cheesy boat poem into something with more depth and story. Lovely sea tale.