Constructive Criticism Appreciated!

[Mirage]

The Grand Outdoors;
With whistling trees,
And cawing crows,
Always moving, never stopping.

People shuffling;
Hustling and bustling,
Walking or running.
Always moving, never stopping.

The world around us;
Yes, our grand world,
Is a life form itself.
Always moving, never stopping.

---

Thanks for any input! :D

[embers]

You're being a bit too general. I think you'll agree with me that poetry is essentially about building an image in the reader's head, right?

The Grand Outdoors;
With whistling trees,
And cawing crows,
Always moving, never stopping.

So you've given us two starting points - whistling trees and cawing cows. There's not really much there to go by. What do whistling trees and cawing cows sound like to you? Do they provoke some kind of image you can compare and relate this to?

There's a pretty good exercise you can do which involves taking a line from the stanza and developing it into a stanza on its own. At the moment 'whistling trees' stands on its own as the starter for an image that you never really develop. Most imagery you will find in poetry attempts to describe things through relation: putting something across to you in terms you haven't thought of before. Owen Sheers is a good poet at describing places, check out his poem Mametz Wood (http://www.helpmewithenglish.co.uk/page_2111252.html), in fact it appears in my GCSE course which makes me even more happy. I can't describe to you how much I love it.

A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger, the blown
and broken bird's egg of a skull,

It's an interesting way to look at dug up bodies from a war, eh? And an interesting way to look at the earth from which it is dug:

And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin.

I won't go into the literary techniques used in those, I'd just suggest you focus on getting actual images down. The only way to open your mind to new images is to try and be really perceptive, making comparisons around you all the time, and to read lots and lots of poetry and to emulate it as much as you can. This leads me to:

People shuffling;
Hustling and bustling,
Walking or running.
Always moving, never stopping.

following on from the unfinished feel of the previous stanza, this one seems like an abrupt change. While I get the literary technique of the constant 'ing' sounds giving the constant sense of movement and shit, it still lacks that kind of imagery that would set it down as poem with good foundation.

The third stanza sounds like simplified David Attenborough. Also, it's better not to tell the reader an in your face message you want to give them. They're supposed to have received and interpreted it through the imagery, I'm sure you can work on that.

Sorry if that sounded harsh at all, but that's how constructive criticism always sounds man. If you have any other questions you can just drop me a message. :P

[Mirage]

Wow. Just wow. EXTREMELY thorough! Thank you for your input, I already knew it kind of sucked. :D