Autumn

An observation and personification of the season of Autumn as a young girl.

Autumn lives a carefree life

Her duties are nothing but to fall

Leaves hit the ground in a silent flood

Making a downy bed for their mistress to use

Autumn spreads her arms and screams

Her little game is to scare the birds

Send them flitting and fluttering north

To where her brother can no longer clip their wings

Autumn whistles gaily

Her notes making winds which seem to sing

Her little gusts giving the world variety

Tumbling around the skies and plains

Her hair shines in every shade

From red to brown to auburn and beige

Every color in Autumn's spectrum

Settles together like Gaea's mosaic

Autumn's eyes watch the world

With unbridled wonder

Puzzling the mysteries her sisters have left behind

After she had fallen asleep again

Such odd things surround her

So many greens and bright lights

People so happy and warm together

Autumn cries at the beauty, rains her feelings down

She can only see her sister for so long

Before she is left on her own to play

And big brother comes along

To put her down to bed again

Autumn is curious

She looks at the rainfall and wind

The heat and cold and wetness

How the people change with the weather

When her play time is over, Autumn sleeps

She dreams of the light in the leaves

Of the green grass and blue skies

Of clouds glad to fly

Autumn has the temper typical

For one of her age

She feels her anger well up

And lets her rage go into the world

But she is not a bad force

Just a young girl

Growing in the small time she has

Before she goes to sleep again

The leaves are a nice mattress

The snow soon becomes a blanket

She thinks she can hear sister Spring calling

And smiles while sleep wraps her for another year

Author's Note

Where is improvement needed?

Reviews

[xx]

Lovely. Just lovely.

Before I go into my long-winded analysis, I'd like to ask you to bear with me, because I just might bore you...but hang in there!

Personally, I perceive Autumn as a calming, cool, slowing influence; therefore, her personification in this poem is especially appropriate (in my opinion, which could very well be different from anyone else's). Your first stanza maintains this image beautifully - instead of autumn blowing in an actively bringing in the season as winter is described to do, you described Autumn as one with no duties but "to fall," and the leaves that cover the ground are not the result of her active, destructive force but simply nature bringing about a "downy bed" for her. Wonderful. Correlates perfectly with Autumn's personality.

Now, the second stanza - I'll admit that Autumn's screaming to scare the birds jarred me for just a second, since I didn't get the impression that she was a malicious person who delights in frightening small creatures, but the latter half of the stanza made me understand that she only screams to scare the birds to send them on their migratory trip to warmer climes, to prevent their harm at the cold hands of brother Winter blowing in. But I did notice you said Autumn sends the birds flying north - actually, birds fly /south/ in order to get to warmer latitudes. To fly north is to fly straight into arctic conditions.

Autumn whistles "gaily" - lovely description here, fits wonderfully - and the winds of her whistling tumble about the "skies and the plains." Explains the autumn weather's source. The colors of her hair reflect the wide variety of colors we see in the autumn leaves, of course, and so on and so on. I won't bore you with the details of what you wrote yourself.

But I disagree with Icelanna when it comes to the sixth stanza. The visual imagery presented by Autumn "rain[ing] her feelings down" is appropriate - the personification of the season may be presented as human in the poem, but in the end, she is a season, and the personification is only a device used to help us relate to her in human terms. She is most definitely still capable of raining her feelings down - hence, autumn weather, which is often rainy and muggy.


I'll disagree yet again with Icelanna when it comes to the matter of punctuation. Yes, /prose/ needs punctuation (unless you're writing some kind of highly interpretative piece that permits otherwise), but poetry isn't constrained by the same limits. Punctuation doesn't always dictate the rhythm of a poem or its meter or anything else - it helps, but take a look at e.e. cummings (yes, uncapitalized, you'll understand immediately if you google his poetic works). He's an extreme example, but many of his poems use absolutely /no/ punctuation. And we all study him in our literature classes! He's a brilliant poet, and he didn't feel the need to use punctuation unless he, quite frankly, just felt like it.

I'm not saying that we all operate on his level, but what I /am/ saying is that poetry doesn't necessarily need punctuation to make it poetry. It is necessary in prose, but /not/ poetry. In fact, punctuation is such a flowing thing in poetry that many authors deliberately manipulate it (in /very/ strange) ways that, if used in prose, would immediately have the to-be-novel-writer blacklisted by handfuls of publishing companies.

It is up to writer's discretion, to put it simply - poetic license. A reader must be intuitive enough to deduce a poem's rhythm and flow. I certainly didn't read this in one breath. A reader instinctively knows where to pause and where to go on. (By the way, I do see two commas in here, I think.) Now, this poetic license doesn't excuse /everything/, and bad poetry is just bad poetry and incorrect grammar/mechanics/punctuation is simply just that, but in this case, I think your poem is just fine without punctuation.

I'm impressed by your writing - keep at it! :)

-Mina

[Icelanna]

I like it! Although you seriously need some punctuation in this. There's not a full stop, comma or exclamative anywhere. It is a must, especially in poetry, the punctuation gives depth. The full stops and commas create pauses. I read thing literally as they come, if I come across a comma or a full stop I stop at it for a second and then continue on - this just carries on and on, it's non stop and feels like it's read on one breath!! I love the actual text of this, however I don't think of it as a story as this theme is used mainly as the "setting the scene" trick of the triad. Because it's presented as a poem in separate stanza's and a poem tells a story that has emotive meaning and purpose, which this does, stories usually include characters and a plot, this is a personified description - equalling to a poem. It would be difficult to create a whole story from a season with no real characters, that's why personification of inanimate things and things which are alive but aren't human such as nature aka the seasons and whatnot is used mainly in poetry.
Also I don't like the line "rains her feelings down." If you mean emotionally she feels let down or her spirits are dampened this needs to be reworded. I get the fact "rain" is linked to the weather and seasons but it doesn't fit - if you mean the word "reigns" as in trying to reign in your feelings it would fit better but I would say "reigns her falling feelings." If you don't mean she's feeling depressed or whatever - I don't get the line anyway.
But you have great lexical fields, I love autumn mainly because it's the most colourful season and It's the season of my birthday so you captured it very well. I love your personification sometimes doing it makes it false but yours is very believable! I've always called inanimate objects and things like that "her" as well, I don't know why. Also because you called the season female the words are smooth and soft and create a gentleness to it which is stereotypically representative of a feminine girl/woman.
I like this, just work on your punctuation/grammar. You need it in anything you write, check out my stuff, it's full of it.
Hope this helps!!
Love to you x