Hey there, I’m Ed from #GrammarNaziCritiques. I’m sorry it’s taken a while to get to your submission.

First off, I think this is really beautiful. And I’m going to have to use a different way of critiquing this to get into some feedback. While I do think it is really well written, I personally found it really hard to understand on a deeper level than just a superficial level.

I think what might be most helpful is if I rephrase the poem from your language into something simpler. This isn’t to say what you’ve done is bad, though! I just want to see if I get the right meaning. If I don’t there’s something got lost in your phrasing that should be reconsidered. My version isn’t going to sound even vaguely poetic or have any sort of rhythm; it’s purely for meaning.

When tears that mean nothing don’t leave a mark (either mentally or physically)
The hidden part of love means nothing
I feel indifferent; my feelings are barren (inhospitable/lacking anything substantial)
My heart is healed; it’s no longer damaged.

Our love is dying/died (I’m unclear on tense)
I hope I will watch it die
Already unloving ‘petals’ will die more
They will dissolve into nothing and fly away in the wind
(I think I get the meaning of the last line?)

While I look one way (cold shoulder, maybe?)
Your hands reach out, hoping it’s fate
To be with someone your heart remembers/desires
and that we can love again

Something is only beautiful when it is at a distance/withheld (?)
It means that you love it more if you can’t have it
I did love you
But I can’t anymore.

Some of those we’re really hard to try and understand, and I’ve probably misread some of them or got a different meaning to the one you intended. I did try and make it coherent, though I don’t think I managed. If we look at what happens in each stanza:
1 – The narrator realizes that she/he no longer loves their previous partner, and has healed the wounds of their love. They’re indifferent, as you put it.
2 – Love is dying, but you say ‘watch it die’ (in the past) so I feel like this healing hasn’t happened here (unless it moves into the past) This stanza talks about the dissolution of love.
3 – You want us to love again, and find that I love you too.
4 – You’ll still find me beautiful. I did love you once, but I can’t (for my own sake) love you again.

Is that just about the gist of it?

The one line that I really didn’t feel like it worked was ‘to fertilize the passion grow.’ It’s not really grammatically correct and feels like a throwaway thought rather than something that should be considered.

I don’t see anything that’s an issue with rhyming or rhythm. While it’s not particularly exciting to see or read, there is definitely something to be said about having the ability to confine yourself to a certain style. I think it’s something you need to be able to do before you start ‘breaking the rules’ and writing free verse.

You could also think about your use of punctuation. Everything in a poem is noticed and represents something you want to relate to the reader. What does a comma mean? A pause in thought, a change of idea? What about a period? An end of something, a definite point? Then what about colons, semicolons, ellipses?

The visuals weren’t anything too revolutionary. But then again, there’s nothing wrong with writing something generic/classic really well. I think you’re almost there, you just need to work on being able to get across your meaning clearly without having to work at trying to decipher what you mean.

I hope that helps!

Let me know if you’ve got any questions!

Hello! Apologies for the ridiculous wait on your critique

I don't run into many rhyming poems, nor do I write them, so this will probably be more subjective than usual. While I appreciate that the rhymes aren't forced as I often find on dA poetry, the rhythm does bother me, with each line varying somewhere between seven and ten syllables. Your stanzas are very predictably structured with some sort of punctuation at the end of every line. These are not necessarily bad things, but the rhyme alternates with equal predictability. It makes for a boring poem to me when I can see exactly what is coming.

This is how the poem sounds when read out loud: [link] If you listen closely, you will notice the difference in the pauses I make at commas and at periods. Periods are slightly longer. You can use this effect to give your poetry a sense of rhythm. The lines of the second stanza in particular sound very separate and disjointed from each other because they are very fragmented from each other. They don't feel like a complete stanza. Overall, the entire poem has a sort of sing-songy effect that rhyming poetry often falls into. Whether you want that or not is up to you, but it's never appealed to me personally.

Content-wise, I didn't find much that awed me. It's a rather generic love poem to/about a faceless entity . What imagery there is (I particularly like the line about warmth being gated) is pretty strong, if a little cliched (such as the dying flower), so I know there's more potential here to make us see the poem.

Hope this was helpful!

lovely piece.

You're long awaited first place prize/response to this poem [link]

Many congrats on first place! This is amazing!

Wonderful work; congratulations on taking first place!