A twisting river snakes through the valley,
The melt water roars on its course to the sea.
An eagle soars up above, wild and free.
Pine forests cover the mountain sides,
Brown deer gallop through the woodlands.
Red breasted robins call from the top of the trees,
Their whistling notes carried by the cool breeze.
The thud of pine cones dropping fills the forest air.
The sun sinks below the mountain ridge,
As an eagle’s piercing cry rings overhead.
The sky slowly fades from blue to red,
And silver stars start to flicker in the night.
An owl’s yellow eyes gleam in the darkness,
And a wolf can be heard howling at the moon.
Insects chirrup and sing in the forest’s gloom.
As the day comes to an end in the great wilderness.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,738 Reviews
Hiya! I'm back for yet another review! And happy last-half-hour of Review Day!
This feels overall very peaceful and really all-around fine. I've got no problems with this fluency-wise or structure-wise, so that is very well done on your part!
Just two nit-picks, though:
Did you mean 'melted?"
'Pine cone' is one word.
Nothing else to really say here other than that I love the imagery and that the last stanza is probably my favorited because of the diversity. Overall very well done!
Never ever stop writing!
~Holographic Ladybug
Hi there, felistia! cleverclogs here to review!
I think that there are many things in this poem that are totally solid. The imagery is good. The rhymes aren't forced. The rhythm isn't very awkward. However, there's just something about this poem that prevents it from truly being fabulous. I think this is down to two things:
1. It doesn't really bring anything new to the table. The imagery, while solid, is just sort of old. Wolves howling at the moon, robins singing, eagles soaring, it all feels like something out of a fairy tale. And I'm not really sure that's what you were shooting for. It doesn't really make me feel anything.
Also, the poem doesn't really go anywhere. It's like a description of a picture-perfect forest all through the day, and then it ends. I think if it had some sort of new message that readers could take away from it, then it might make it more interesting to me.
2. The lines are all structured similarly. Almost every line goes, "a/the [noun] [does something noun-y]". It gets repetitive after a while. Try changing up the structure of your lines. Otherwise, it all begins to sound the same. For example, instead of saying, "The robins call", say, "the call of the robins drift out into the air", or something along those lines.
I think that those are the two most major things that you should focus on. Now, it's time for some nitpicks.
The rest of this poem is present-tense, yet this line is past-tense. This can be fixed by changing "galloped" to "gallop".
Also, a note a punctuation: I see from the other reviews that you have changed the punctuation from what it was originally, but you can go one step further, too. Try punctuating this as if it were prose. I find this very difficult to explain, so here's a lovely article about it from our very own YWS knowledge base.
Poetry & Punctuation
That's the end of the nitpicking. This was pretty well-edited.
So, bottom line: This was a good poem, but I think that the repetitive structure and lack of anything new are holding it back from being a great poem. Your use of imagery and your obvious respect for wildlife are to commended, though.
Thanks for the review. I have corrected the punctuation, I think.
Hello Felistia , this is a very good poem that does exactly what its title suggests , it is a wonderful description of the Great Wilderness , of nature in general. It has its own flow , a slow one as if you want the reader to pay attention to every little detail in this natural landscape you're presenting. The poem has a very linear course from daytime to nighttime and you describe that very well. You manage to make this shift from day to night seem natural and slow , as it is in real life , and not abrupt and strange. On top of that , the images you show the reader are easy to imagine and make up for a quite beautiful sight to behold in one's mind. You make a nice transition between living beings and simple objects of nature , as in the part with "The sun sinks below the mountain ridge - An eagle's piercing call rings overhead" , where you take us from the bottom of a ridge to the eagle that flies in the sky. However , as the other reviewer mentioned , the fullstops at the end of each stanza kind of stop that flow you're trying to create , they change the rhythm in a strange way. I'd suggest paying attention to their use in the future unless their use is deliberate and you're indeed trying to create a new rhythm with them or show an emotion to the reader. All in all , a very good poem which fulfilled its purpose beautifully. Thank you for this trip through the wilderness Felistia !
-A Concerned Greek
Hey there~ first of all, I see that you're kind of new here, so welcome to the site! I hope you find it super welcoming and everything.
First of all I have to say that I love the imagery in your poem! It's so vivid and really brings me that nostalgic feeling, having been raised in the Midwest for large parts of my life. <3
I do want to note that your punctuation is a little off-putting. For example, I feel as though the final stanza might flow better if it didn't have punctuation at the end of every line. I like to think of line breaks as a sort of punctuation, interrupting the immediate thought without bringing it to a complete stop. (If that makes sense. Think of it as being akin to a comma.)
I also feel like your story was a little anticlimactic. Nature is certainly beautiful, but what is the end point of the poem? Is it merely a description of a day? I feel as though perhaps that point might come across more directly if you were to follow a specific narrative, like a recurring image of sunlight or something like that. As is, it seems a little less cohesive than is optimal.
Thank you for posting! I love seeing other people revel in the beauty that is nature. I feel a little like a transcendentalist whenever I read this kind of piece. ^.^
~Meda