Poetry / When Ripples Wink (Analysis)

Very nice poem, capturing the beauty of the river and even though ripples tend to disturb the calmness of a body of water, you made it seem beautiful. An excellent read and helps make me feel better about starting my day.

Thanks for sharing!

Overall, I feel that the attempt to anthropomorphize the pebble doesn’t work in this piece because there is nothing ascribed to it that makes it unique or deserving of the attention. The first stanza is a great set up, but the rest of the poem never follows through. How does the pebble’s emotions fit into its journey down the river? What makes the child decide to pick this pebble? What is the relationship between the pebble and the river? Is the child simply an observer? If not, the child needs a stronger relationship to the pebble and the river.

Several of the verses were mentally fatiguing because of poor constuction or placement, poor word choice, abrupt thought shift, or simply made no sense. The  breverse sentence construction used in a few of the verses was a big impediment to the poem because it forced a stumbling block in both the reading flow and the imagery of river flow. It appears that this construction was used mainly to fit the rhyming scheme. Several word choices seem inappropriate because they either have no foundation to stand or cause clashing mental images. How is the pebble “swank”? “River’s zeal” changes the image of smooth, lazy flow to loud and fast-moving. What is painting the clouds incandescent white? The verse beginning “All is fragile…” is worded incorrectly to fit well in this stanza.

I also felt that the poetry was at constant odds with itself; focus kept shifting from pebble to river back and forth instead of moving together. I would expect something like this for ocean imagery.

I think the content will work better if the execution is improved.

I loved what you were trying ti iompart to the reader. Such human-like emotions and thought processes. Pretty dang good.

To be honest, I’m not much for this kind of work, but I liked how you wrote what you did. KUDOS!!!

A pebble shyly blends amidst smooth rocks
Residing along the wet river’s bank
With sincere emotions and feelings it locks
Compared to others it is but swank

Great imagery. (or however it’s spelled-I never got to the final 10 in the spelling bee. Thank God for spell check!) I think you’ve allowed us to see things through a different pair of eyes. Thank you

Overall good job,

Some small time word usage that seemed a bit warpped.

But then again it could be just be me being pickey

keep up all the good work!

-TDO

Well, I just did a review for another poetry piece before this and had huge problems with inconsistency with the rhymes, but this one keeps it consistently throughout the entire piece, well done. Good job, your poetry is the best I’ve read so far today (and the days almost over too, so it could be the best of the day for me).

This was very good, but I found a couple of the rhymes a little clunky, like you were trying a bit hard to keep the rythm going. Like:
“Compared to others it is but swank”
It’s also a little ambiguous if you are trying to personify the river and the pebble or not – you start talking about them having emotions etc, but never really delve into it and they almost go back to being inanimate objects.
I do really like it and think you would have a good chance at having this published :-) Best of luck