The capture of the shark is man's work. One imagines the shark as masculine. And, in this poem, even the allusion to God implies the usual masculine delineation, using the capitalized "Him" several times in the poem. the imagery of the poem makes it hard to determine the gender of the poet. One can ask several critics to read and describe the imagery of The Shark, and chances are slim that they would immediately find that it was written by a woman.
