03-12-2016, 09:12 PM
Hi, jameso - by posting in 'Mild' you're inviting a bit more honest feedback than you'd get in 'Novice'. A wise decision.
Some feedback below:
1. A number of phrases and expressions in the poem are poetic cliches, having been repeated by countless poets bad and good over hundreds of years. Examples are "crimson eve", "purple night", "shrouded moon", etc.
2. Images have been drawn that are not credible - for instance,
a) the night sky is never purple, except close to the Arctic circle perhaps;
b) the moon, shrouded or not, doesn't dapple leaves. Rather, it is the leaves that create a dappled light and shade pattern of light on the ground under the moon
c) a Banyan tree pops up in the middle of a glen.
d) a traveller walking 1,000 miles on foot (also see the next point)
3. The Night Mountain starts off hinting to be a metaphor if not euphemism for something , but in the poem, you are also talking about a literal mountain, one that has a 'forest creeping' over its face. Now if this is all metaphor, you need to explain that the heck a forest on the face of life's mountain is in turn a metaphor for. Otherwise, the metaphor suddenly becomes random. When the poem ends, the reader is left with the feeling that you were just making things up. As fantasy, it's not fantastic enough; as philosophy it's not logical enough.
Some feedback below:
1. A number of phrases and expressions in the poem are poetic cliches, having been repeated by countless poets bad and good over hundreds of years. Examples are "crimson eve", "purple night", "shrouded moon", etc.
2. Images have been drawn that are not credible - for instance,
a) the night sky is never purple, except close to the Arctic circle perhaps;
b) the moon, shrouded or not, doesn't dapple leaves. Rather, it is the leaves that create a dappled light and shade pattern of light on the ground under the moon
c) a Banyan tree pops up in the middle of a glen.
d) a traveller walking 1,000 miles on foot (also see the next point)
3. The Night Mountain starts off hinting to be a metaphor if not euphemism for something , but in the poem, you are also talking about a literal mountain, one that has a 'forest creeping' over its face. Now if this is all metaphor, you need to explain that the heck a forest on the face of life's mountain is in turn a metaphor for. Otherwise, the metaphor suddenly becomes random. When the poem ends, the reader is left with the feeling that you were just making things up. As fantasy, it's not fantastic enough; as philosophy it's not logical enough.
~ I think I just quoted myself - Achebe