The mountain's song

Sapphirejay wrote:The mountains sing a song unknown

Maybe you could rewrite this sentence as: When the mountain sings an unknown song - this would make this a little less confusing.

Sapphirejay wrote:The wind cries it’s plea,

You should probably do 'When the wind cries it's plea

Sapphirejay wrote:The river rushes out
past the rocks to me

past the rocks, to me.

Sapphirejay wrote:A bear stumbles onto his back
His mother comes to his side,
A turtle stays frozen in the path
Worried that he again would slide

When you talk about the turtle, I'm a little confused what this 'path' is. Is it water, mud? Be more specific.

Sapphirejay wrote:This turtle hates the river
He also hates the wind,
He slipped and slid in the nearby spring
While dragonfly watched and grinned

While the dragonfly

Sapphirejay wrote:The fox came sneaking by the mother
As she tended the child’s wounds,

Don't use child. It gives me the image of a little baby. Maybe you could use 'cub.'

Sapphirejay wrote:Because he thought he heard a dog
Baying at a coon

Are dogs really that great of a threat to foxes? I'd always think that foxes would be higher on the list . ..

Sapphirejay wrote:Frightened by the dog's cries
The bears ran to hide,
While the fox went into his den
And the turtle slowly got up with pride

Good description here and I like the sense of urgency. However, I do not understand why a dog is so menacing to a bear and a fox . . .

Sapphirejay wrote:Evening came along,
Begging the animals to stay
Cooling down the mountainside
in a calm, majestic way

Looking to the mountains
Hiking beside the river.
Smiling at the wind
The man did everything but shiver

He called his dog to his side
As he adventured west,
He hiked the wild path
To nature, he said “be blessed”

Alright, now your losing me here. What man? Okay, in terms of the overall poem . . .


You kind of lost me. You jumped around a lot and you didn't make sense.
I did enjoy the vivid imagery you created though.
PM me if you have any questions ^o^

Hiii! So here we go. My first review for you.

One grammar nitpick I'll point out, in the second line: The wind cries it’s plea.
It really should be "its". Otherwise the sentence says: The wind cries it is plea.

Rhythm
Now I want to point out a few spots where you had trouble with the rhythm. If you're not quite sure what i mean by that word: I say rhythm to mean the fluency of the poem when you're reading it. When there's a line or a word that's too long or too short it doesn't read smoothly.
So here's what I came across as I read this (I might add a couple other notes that don't have to do with rhythm):

The mountains sing a song unknown
The wind cries it’s plea,
The river rushes out
past the rocks to me

The second line is a little too short; the 3'rd and last lines are also short, but you tend to pair together the first two and the second two lines as you read. If you just added one more syllable I think it would be good.

A bear stumbles onto his back
His mother comes to his side,

First, I think it would make more sense if you said "bear cub" maybe. Otherwise we sort of do a doubletake when we see "mother". Just a very slight one, but in general you don't want little things like that too distract us.
Now, in that first line, the word "onto" tripped me up. I think you need that many syllables, but somehow "onto" made it read clumsily for me. So, I think, if you did change it to "bear cub" and then to "on" instead of "onto" you'd have the same number of syllables but it would read more smoothly.

The fox came sneaking by the mother
As she tended the child’s wounds,
Because he thought he heard a dog
Baying at a coon

The first line here seems too long.
Also, your meaning isn't quite clear with this verse; I wasn't sure if you were talking about the child hearing the dog, or the fox hearing the dog. And if it's the fox, why would hearing the dog cause him to sneak by the mother and child?



Now, I'm going to take a closer look at meaning and content.

In the first stanza you say "me". You never say it or imply it again; you don't really make this poem about your observations, it's not about you, it's objective.
Then in the last two stanzas you mention a man... but for the first time, and as though this is was what he was observing all this time. It's makes it more confusing that you say "the" man instead of "a" man. If you even just changed that one word, I think it would make that man seem less... random.

Someone else mentioned the way you change tenses in this poem; I do agree with Searria that i like it better in the present tense.

It's difficult to evaluate the subject of the poem; I'm not really sure what you were trying to say, or if you weren't really trying to say much of anything, just describe the scene. Which would be fine, but you seem to have a sequence of events that goes roughly like this: A bear slips, his mother helps him, turtle doesn't move, turtle hates the places, turtle slips, fox sneaks by a mother (what mother??), hears a dog, he and the bears hide, and the turtle stands up from slipping, and then you have the man. It's a little jumbled together. Personally, I think it might be clearer if you had something to tie all the animals together; start out talking about them seperately like you did, and then have them all doing something. Like, you had the fox and the bears run from the dog, but not the turtle; that makes the turtle seem out of place. If you describe them in their seperate pursuits and then brought them together by the fear of the dog, that would connect the poem. You need to have the subjects of your poem all connected in some way, by some thing.

The first stanza seems out of place from the rest of them. In the first where you talk about the "mountain's song", the title of your poem, you talk about the wind, the river, the scenery; introducing your poem that way makes it seem to the reader that the mountain's song will be about that part of nature. But you go on to talk about animals instead, and you don't combine the two at all. You start with the one, go on to talk about the animals, and then you end with the river etc. as well. The man doesn't notice the animals, he notices the river and the wind, again.

The third-to-last stanza doesn't really seem to fit the best either. So far you've had this snapshot in time, these short scenes in the day where not much time passes. But suddenly you're talking about a much longer passage of time ("evening came along") and the rest of it I can't really make sense of, to be honest: Begging the animals to stay <-- when were they leaving
Cooling down the mountainside <-- is this the evening cooling down the mountainside? that would be clearer with punctuation, which I'll come back to
in a calm, majestic way <-- this line doesn't really seem to fit either; I'll come back to this also

When it comes to the content of your poem, it needs to flow just like your rhythm does. You need to have all your ideas connect into one overall idea. Everything has to fit together like a puzzle; the picture on each piece has to connect to form on big picture; they can't stay seperate.


Punctuation: You don't really have a lot of it in this poem, just a few commas scattered here and there.
Now, unlike prose, poetry doesn't have to have punctuation. But, you do need to have a reason for not using normal punctuation, and above all you have to make sure that your poem is still clear even without it. I couldn't really see a good reason for not having punctuation, myself; you could have a reason I don't know about. But, it also made some parts more confusing than they needed to be. Remember, you don't want to have your reader distracted from the words by jars in the rhythm, by random words that they try to make belong but just can't see how it fits, or when they have to try to figure out how a sentence is supposed to go, or where it's supposed to end, because of lack of punctuation. In my opinion, your poem would be better with all the usual punctuation.

Rhyme scheme:
So you rhymed the 2'nd and last lines of each line. Now at first I didn't even realize that you had a rhyme scheme going in every verse, and that's great! Obviously not all rhymes scemes are going to be that subtle, but you had some near-rhymes, and some exact rhymes, and they all blended in. Almost completely.
Even though I didn't realize they were there right away, I did pretty quickly when I was noticing words, and phrases, that just didn't quite sound right. Then I realized it was because you needed the last words of those lines to rhyme.
This is something you have to be extremely careful about when writing a rhyming poem. You can't make any sacrifices for rhyme. That's what makes rhyming so difficult. The words you use to make a rhyme have to feel like the words that you would use there anyway. It's almost as though the rhyming happens by accident.
For example, take the line I pointed out before:
"Begging the animals to stay
Cooling down the mountainside
in a calm, majestic way"
Remember how I said that last line didn't really seem to fit? That made it obvious that it was only there because you needed a rhyme for "stay". I don't think you would have put that line there, if you hadn't needed that rhyme.


One last thing: sweetie pie suggested you need to capitalize the first letter of every line. You might already know this, but that is actually not a rule of poetry. A lot of poetry did, especially classic poetry, but you don't have to.

I hope you find this helpful deary. =) Let me know if you have any questions.

-Adna

Very interesting poem.

You change tense all of a sudden in the middle to past-tense. I think I like it better in present-tense.

The mountains sing a song unknown
The wind cries it’s plea,
The river rushes out
past the rocks to me

The last line interrupts the rhythm. I would add a two-syllable adjective before "rocks"

A bear stumbles onto his back
His mother comes to his side,
A turtle stays frozen in the path
Worried that he again would slide

Once again the last line doesn't work for me. I would say "Worried that again he'll slide" I do like this stanza though.

While dragonfly watched and grinned

The way you use it, "dragonfly" should be capitalized.

As she tended the child’s wounds,

"tends"

Frightened by the dog's cries
The bears ran to hide,
While the fox went into his den
And the turtle slowly got up with pride

tense

Looking to the mountains
Hiking beside the river.
Smiling at the wind
The man did everything but shiver

I would say: "Gazing at the mountains." Switch the tense again

As he adventured west,

'ventured" would keep the rhythm going.


Nice, peaceful poem. I love the outdoors. I would like more description of the environment, not just the animals.

Other than that, good work!

-Sea-