Winter

When the trees are thin and bare,
That's when the fox sleeps in her lair
Through the branches of the birch,
The owl sits upon his perch

Outside the blizzard shows its power,
Pretty as a winter flower
When we hang the mistletoe,
We always watch the raging snow


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I wrote this when I was 12, and it's the first poem I've ever written, so I know it's nothing extreme.

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What the heck is that? It's not part of the poem, I know, but it's ditzy. I'm sorry. It was really distracting. Anyway, on to the real poem:

This was mostly well-constructed, except for the lack of punctuation other than some scattered commas, and the descriptions, though conventional, were enjoyable. But...it didn't go anywhere. There was no point to be made, nothing to be resolved, no plot, just description. A poem with descriptions is nice but it usually goes somewhere. It doesn't have to make some huge point about life or have a moral - in fact, it's better if it doesn't - but good poetry usually says something.

Here's how I would punctuate it (and other small things):
When the trees are thin and bare,
That's when the fox sleeps in her lair.
[s]Through[/s]Among the branches of the birch,
The owl sits upon his perch.

Outside, the blizzard shows its power,
Pretty as a winter flower.
When we hang the mistletoe,
We always watch the raging snow.

Colleen

I like the first stanza, I thought it was cool how you could rhyme and have the stanza still make sense and how it still related to your topic (I have a difficult time writing rhyming poems).

I think that you should add more to it, since it is on the short side.

Short is not necessarily bad. What it needs is a place to go, regardless of length. Dragging out the description will make it worse. Adding a stanza to give it some meaning or direction would be better.

Colleen

This was good esspecially for your first poem and at such a young age. I hope to see more advanced versions of this poem though. Fix through the grammar and spelling a bit and try to add the detail at the beggining of your poem as a little not using ___________ to separate it from your piece, that helps people recongnize what they're reading before they start in and doesn't confuse them when they start to review the actual work. Otherwise those key things just need a bit of touching up, the shortness was good for the particular piece, I enjoyed it!

Keep it up!
-Rieda