Praising the River -- a poem I wrote

Praising the River

Sherrianna Scott

Boldly branching off from the blue-brown lake

Winding through valleys and out to sea

Reaching far to achieve its goal

Unafraid of the obstacles that lay ahead

A rock, it passes over

A tree, it flows on by

A mountain, it goes around

A cliff it transforms into a waterfall

And glides down with grace and grandeur

Pure, clean, beautiful

With an innocent and carefree quality

Constant and true, reliable in a way

Nondiscriminatory, providing life to all -

To all the animals of the land, to all the plants in the ground,

To all the fish in its waters, to all the creatures in the sky

Nourishing them all on its journey out to sea

Perhaps we can learn something from this humble river -

Our steady, brave, and resilient friend

Who proceeds onward, unyielding to impediments

But dutifully helps others along the way

These are some of the literary techniques I used in the poem:

Alliteration

I used some alliteration, repeating the letter “b” in line 1 in the words boldly, branching, blue, and brown and repeating the letter “g” in line 9 in the words glides, grace, and grandeur.

Consonance

On line 8, I repeated “f” in cliff, transforms, and waterfall. On line 14, I repeated “n” in animals, land, plants, and ground.

Repetition

I used some repetition in parts of my poem. I repeated “to all” in lines 14 and 15

I repeated “A” at the beginning of lines 5, 6, 7, and 8. This repetition creates a list of items and qualities.

Line breaks

I used enjambed lines for this poem because I am using mostly descriptive and action words to describe the river and I do not actually state that I am describing a river. In this way, I can keep identifying attributes of the river in a constant flow of words instead of having to state “the river” in every line or stanza. I assume that the reader will know that I am talking about a river because of the title and the last stanza. Thus, I just used a continuous flow of thoughts and description to illustrate the river to my reader. Plus, this helps the poem flow smoothly, like a river. J

My poem is accentual, with mostly 4 beats per line. Still, some lines only have three, but there can always be a few exceptions so that the poem will sound better when it is read and make more sense. The only lines which I used three beats per line contain mostly description which I included to provide additional support for the theme of my poem but decided not to expound on since they are mostly self explanatory: “Pure, clean, beautiful,” “With an innocent and carefree quality,” “Constant and true, reliable in a way.” Also, a few of my lines are only two beats, and I did this to emphasize that these lines are not the focus of the poem; they are a side note and example that I am making to enforce my main point. Namely, these lines are “A rock, it passes over,” “A tree, it flows on by,” and “A mountain, it goes around.”They show the actions a river takes when faced with obstacles and help the reader understand my point that a river continues moving forward no matter what barriers it may come up against, but are not necessarily essential to this point, since I had already stated that a river is “Unafraid of the obstacles that lay ahead,” but they allow me to illustrate to the reader how I see a river and create an image of it in their mind. The process of making my line breaks consistently accentual was fairly easy for me, since I have a pretty good sense of rhythm (I was in band for five years, after all) but I still had to go back and revise a little to make it more consistent throughout the poem.