Aliza's Review of Mary's Poem

Mary’s poem “Free” is an observational nature poem in which she described the early morning in a valley, were a peaceful quiet veils the brutality of the night. Mary keeps herself out of the poem completely, and my opinion about this is sort of torn. On the one hand, I like that in removing herself she presents a natural world independent of human perception/interference. Conversely, I think putting herself into the poem might make it more relatable to the reader. I like how Mary chose to capitalize certain words that normally would not be capitalized (Silence, Morning, Free). I thought maybe this was an allusion to Aristotle’s theory of “essences,” the perfect, unchanging forms that provide a substance with its substantiality. So when Mary writes “There is Silence in the valley,” I imagine not just a silent valley, but The Silent Valley where silence occurs in it’s purest and most prevailing form. I think in terms of revision Mary should try to use more variety in her word choice/descriptions/metaphors, etc. For instance the line “Shadows of morning caress conifers” is almost immediately followed by the line “morning shadows caress herds of dear.” I think there are many more ways to describe this image and more variation in her language would help make each line more powerful.