Hello CorvusQueen,
I dig this! I like poems about nature, and this one has a clear, cohesive theme that works with the subject without stating it (the idea of the lone wolf). At first glance, there isn't much to say about this poem other than it's neat and has a nice theme. My second time through, though, I noticed that your meter could use some work!
I'm not sure if you're familiar with how meter works, so I'll be giving you a crash course. If you're all up to speed on meter, feel free to skip this next section!
Meter works as a pattern or rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. You can also say accents as stresses, but for our purposes we'll use the term "stressed" syllable or "unstressed." There are a lot of different meters used in poetry, but we won't get too far into them. But I will talk about the iamb today! An iamb is a pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. You use these in your poem already!
This has three iambs in it. I've italicized the stressed syllables for you so you can see them. Iambs are a very natural and pleasing rhythm, so I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't doing this on purpose. Iambs are cool.Sends out his faithful cry.
Iambs are so cool that I think it would be worth your time to go back through the poem and see if you can find all the places you're using iambs, and all the places you're not. I'll give you a hint, though. You can make things sound like they're in iambic meter when they might not actually be. It's valuable to have someone else who didn't write it read it out loud naturally to you, so you can hear where the meter falls. For example, in your first line,
You could say it with the stress on "white," but it doesn't sound natural that way. The way it would be naturally said,The white wolf in the frosted woods
starts and ends with iambs, but misses one in the middle. Fun fact-- the opposite of an iamb is a troche, which is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. The more you know!The white wolf in the frosted woods
I can't recommend a remedy for all pieces of meter in your poem, but know that turning it all into iambic meter would further neaten up your poem. It just takes a little polishing to take something from glitter to glow. I hope that this review proves useful to you! If you have any questions about meter in general, I'm ya gal! Good job on this poem. Keep writing, keep revising, and don't forget to keep YWSing!
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