The mountain children murmur into the ripples,
as their mother paints your visage on festival paper.
Lotus rafts in the current, pink and feather small,
careen in the dips of infant mountains drowned.
The flowers slip into the dark fingers of your daughter,
child of the dragon king, eyes as keen as her father’s claws.
Her lips are cleaned of the sticking, ripened juice of mangoes
by a tiny tongue that darts out, scaly lizard along the riverbank.
Gathered into a basket, the petals fold and sigh into one another,
searching for embraces, sinking with their damp weight,
waiting to be strewn like a fractured rainbow in the clouds
when the dragon’s lost sons sound the call for their fisher sister.
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A/N Aish, it's been ages since I've been around YWS. Forgive me for just throwing a piece here! I promise I'll critique back if you ask for one. Also, does anyone know where I'd go to check out definitions of each forum? I can't remember the differences between lyric and dramatic poetry, that's how long I've been gone.
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,828 Reviews
Thank you guys for the suggestions and feedback! <3 YWS is always full of fantastic help.
Lily-- I pulled all this inspiration from a Vietnamese myth about the beginnings of our people, and so one hundred children are born to one mother and one father, the mountain fairy and the dragon king. I know poetry shouldn't be clarified, but...consider that some random background info haha.
Hey octo! After the utterly beautiful, detailed review that you have me a couple of days back, it makes me really sad to say that there is no WAY I will ever be able to give you such detailed feedback. Still, I'll do my best, even though criticizing a poem this good is hard
First off, this being a free verse poem allows it to have any structure you want it to have. There is no particular rhyme scheme or rhythm that I captured either.
Remember, when writing a poem, you can actually use things such as the structure itself to convey meaning to your poem. The way the poem looks can actually add to the atmosphere, which my study of poetry has led me to believe. Rhythm and Rhyme are also powerful mediums in conveying meaning and themes, which is something you may want to consider when revising this poem.
Now as for the actual content, I have no nitpicks to offer. See, you know all about placing meaning into your words and using your words wisely. The metaphors that you used, not a single one was a cliche, they were all original so what can I possibly say?
Maybe the only thing is that at first the poem was slightly confusing because I could not tell the real meaning, but that was fine after I read it a couple of times.
But, this poem was really beautiful. My only advice is- try to incorporate some sort of meaningful structure in your poem just so that in a 100 years when people analyze it because it's so great, they'll argue for hours over why the structure is the way it is and they'll actually have a reason to do so, which I'm not convinced scholars do all the time
Great job Octo! And welcome back!
Hey there, octocoffee! We’re happy to have you back, even if you don’t get right back onto the review-wagon. No worries!
Really, I have a few suggestions I wanted to make really because I like this poem a great deal.
Actually I had two things to point out here. Right away, when you say “ripples” I was a little confused about what these children were murmuring ripples into. If you want to maintain that mysterious feel of “oooh, what are they doing??” then more power to you. Or you can throw the word “river” in there, maybe “rippling river” and create some awesome alliteration. (Okay, I might just be making this suggestion because I love alliteration.)
Also, I really, more than anything, had a question with “mother paints.” Is there really only one mother painting? I just thought it seemed odd that there was only one mother I guess.
I thought it would be sort of cool, especially as a way to signify the power of this dragon king, to capitalize the D and K in his name. It adds a little dignity to him, at least I think.
This just befuddled me. Are lizards cleaning the juice off of her mouth or are there lizards there. This needs a bit of a second look I think.
This line just feels a little too long. Like not by much but maybe by a syllable and it makes it feel heavy.
This is a little one that makes reading it, especially out loud, but I would recommend changing “in” to “into.”
Like I said, most of these are just little suggestions that I think could make this read a little better. I end up really judging most of these suggestions, and giving these suggestions, by how a poem reads out loud so keep that in mind.
I like the image of this though and the way you’ve very gracefully blended the imagery of people with the nature which is awesome.
And to find the definition of the different types of poetry, just click here and under each heading there should be a definition. It’s pretty much the same thing you’ll see if you click on the Discover Works button in the navigation bar above.
If you have any other questions or if you need any help getting back into the YWS swing of things, feel free to PM me!
~lilymoore