ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Before I sod off Marty !!!


Bringing life does it for me.

Cheers mate.

Bringing life sounds better to me. It is more plain words of ordinary speech, animating is a bit more of a formal word I think, and you might not need to be formal here.
And the line seems to flow a bit better with Bringing life..
Bringing life means the same thing as animating, so you haven't lost any meaning and the accents of bringing life falls more easily on the third syllable which is what you were after I think.
To my ear you seem to have used what is called anapest metre.
Like the word anaPEST. da da DA.
Bringing LIFE.
Whereas, an-i-MAT-ing doesn't really work that well because we usually say AN-i-mating.

In think you could leave it at animating if you really want that word, metre is not a mathematical formula. But I think there is a struggle for the ear to accept it.

I the end you have to decide, whether you need to sound formal or plain at that line, or how the flow seems to you.

Maybe "enhancing" Mother Nature's etc: ?
Val W

Bringing life works for me within the concept of your poem. The two words have the same definition but to me animating draws an immediate picture of movement as in bringing a cartoon character to life or someone jumping and jiggling around rather than bringing life and colour into nature as in shades and hues One of the medical signs noted when a patient has been resuscitated - bought back to life- is increased colour in the extremities.

Val's suggestion is also good

Cheers

Maureen

I would need to play around with it a bit to get the syllable count right .

Not even gonna touch that Marty

Bob

Hi Marty,
IMO Bringing life to rolls off the tongue a lot easier. Neville's already said what I was thinking:

Bringing LIFE.
Whereas, an-i-MAT-ing doesn't really work that well because we usually say AN-i-mating.

For the same reason, I'm not a fan of EnHANCing, (sorry Val, my opinion only) because the stress is on syllable 2, not 3 which the rest of the poem seems to need.
(Unlike Neville, I have no idea what the metre is called, I just do it by ear and how it sounds when said aloud.)
Also Bringing to life doesn't really work for me in this context (sorry Maureen, again, just my opinion) as to my ear it would give you a stress on the first and fourth syllable, rather than the 3rd.

I like the poem Marty and I think it's worth spending the time on.
Cheers
Robyn