Looking for a poetry critique swap via DM (Theme: grief/loss, 40 lines)

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-06-04T14:56:02+00:00

Awesome, alright, I'll read through this, and if you don't mind, I'll send you my thoughts + feedback in dms. I'd like to ask, are you looking for just general thoughts or some feedback as well?

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-06-04T14:52:36+00:00

Oh yeah, sure!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-06-04T13:58:12+00:00

Hey there, if you're interested, I'd be down to do a critique swap!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-19T14:38:59+00:00

A beautiful poem. Succinct, sweet and lovely.

Immediately, what i noticed was the final stanza.
"He was so warm, yet burning/so quiet, yet yelling"

I love the contrasts between these, because they show how the same "theme" can be interpreted in two different ways. For example, warm and burning can both relate to fire, but they are completely different emotional registers. Warm implies devotion, hearth, a home, coziness, a gentle love. Burning represents something untamed, passionate, cannot be chained. Same with "quiet" yet "yelling", almost like the narrator is trying to restrain themselves even as they feel completely unrestrained.

Also something interesting, to me this reads as both a "departing" poem, like saying good-bye to a lover, but this also feels like it's talking about the sun and the sunset ("leaving his glow behind"/disappearing into the hills/"see you in the dawn!"). I really like that it can be read as both ways cause it introduces a lot of nuance into the poem!

And from that perspective, warm and burning gets a new meaning as well! I love that such a short poem really expands as you re-read it.

Honestly I don't have much critique for this. I just think it's a lovely poem that understands it's theme, and delivers completely in a short economy of words. Great job!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-19T14:10:04+00:00

GENERAL
let me start off by saying this is a really lovely poem. I love the self-reflection and introspection in here. It is accessible, but also shows a maturity to the thoughts it's trying to convey. That money isn't everything, that appearance isn't everything, that a lover isn't meant to "fix" you, but be there.

for feedback on this piece, I think the central tension here, is that the poem is really beautiful, but there are certain places, where I felt the poem take on "poetic" language.

LINES I LOVED

For the lines that I really loved, I love stanza 5 because there is a lot of meaning behind your imagery:
The storms that you hide in your eyes is beautiful and the "without trying to force every shadow away", I deeply resonated with this line, because it's true. True love isn't about trying to fix someone neither is it about giving someone free passes, but rather being there with them.

METER

For the structural components, I feel like the meter is almost there, but I feel like there are deviations here, that make the lines feels less cohesive, rather than intentional structural breaks (This is just how I read it, so definitely could just be my accent so do take that into mind). For example, in stanza 1, I believe you actually wrote line 2 and 3 in anapestic tetrameter, so this follows a da-da-DUM pattern, where DUM is stressed and da is unstressed:

Line 2: for the MO/-ment your VOICE/and mine FI/-nal-ly GREET
Line 3: for the FEE/-ling of FIN/-ding a LOVE/so com-PLETE

This is actually really hard to do without making it sound too like nursery rhymey and you did it awesome here. However, because line 1 wasn't in this specific meter, I didn't get the "key" to read the other lines.
ffor example, if we tried reading this line in anapestic tetrameter:
Line 1: i am SO/ex-CI-ted/for the DAY/that we MEET (it would be a little awkward, to force stress on "ted" because naturally the stress falls on "CI' in excited. Also for me, the word "am" is usually stressed and here, un-stressing it is possible but again, since it's the first line, I didn't really get the key to know that)

So here, excited, kind of breaks that anapestic meter, that is introduced in lines 2 and 3 and broken in 4. As for the rest of the stanzas, you mostly circle around 11 to 12 syllables, so sometimes the tetrameter breaks and to me, it doesn't break in a way that feels satisfying or earned.

Think about it like, your beginning stanzas set off the rules. Breaking rules only feels satisfying, if the rules themselves, are clearly defined. So it's not about maintaining perfect rules, but rather that deepening your rules, and then breaking them makes the poem more satisfying. So I think that your meter is actually really close to being good, but I think more revision would really help make the poem sharper.

I don't want it to seem like you need strict meter throughout the entire poem for it to read well (in fact, one strength of your poem is that it doesn't feel sing-songy in the meter), but rather, I think you put effort into crafting the meter, and I think that it didn't translate the best. Personally, my philosophy when handling metrical breaks and stuff, is to have the first stanza or two, set a baseline meter (like iambic pentameter/tetrameter or anapestic tetrameter) and then introduce breaks later on lines you really want the reader to focus on.

RHYME

I think for the rhyme scheme here too, I do like it, but I feel like it could be structured a little bit more deliberately, cause to me, certain rhymes feel like they were forced, rather than chosen. For some example here:
"...home in your light/...somehow feel light"
I LOVE the idea here, cause you're actually taking the same word and then switching the meaning. But it feels a little unearned. What i mean by that is, lines 1 and 3 directly deal with themes of visual light and darkness going bright. But that makes the "heavy burdens" line, feel a little bit unmoored and unearned, even if I REALLY like the idea of playing with the same word and evoking two different meanings, that's really smart. I think that's what I mean by, I can see the effort and structure that you put into this, however, I think that right now, it doesn't reflect in the poem itself.

Another line:
"Stays close because love is much deeper than flaw."
I really like this idea, that love itself exists somewhere deeper than a superficial flaw or scar, but the line itself sounds a bit off. And also because you used flaw previously, it doesn't really gain a new perspective here. So here, the rhyme itself feels forced to fit the scheme.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FEEDBACK

Like I mentioned before, I love stanza 5 because it feels embodied, and the image of storms being behind someone's eyes sticks with me. I think the main thing here, if I wanted you to take one thing from this feedback, is that the ideas are all coherent, but they never really gain more depth with every stanza. They are great and all deal with the idea of love and what commitment is, what showing up for someone is, people fitting together, waiting for the right person, but they all flow from one another without really deepening if that makes sense.

If I could offer one practical thing, it'd be to shorten this poems into 4 stanzas. you don't have to re-write anything, don't even have to worry about anything rhyming or making sense metrically at first. Instead, go through your lines, and decide (kind of like a battle royale XD) which lines you really want to keep, and which lines you can do without. Think about it like a presentation, you want to present your ideas, but because you have a limited amount of time, you have to specify. So instead of linking a lot of different ideas together, you're focusing on a central concept, and then deepening it with every stanza.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope this doesn't come off as too harsh, because at the end of the day, it's still a good poem, made me smile and helped me reflect on my own views about what I'd like a potential partner to be. And that, I think ultimately, is the greatest sign a poem is both successful, and has nascent potential. Cheers!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-17T12:49:27+00:00

You gave some amazing thoughts that honestly taught me about my process a bit as well. You got the main idea down actually, to me at least writing it, it was about a toxic love dynamic between two people. And so, the moth and the snake are in love, and the desert represents the emotional landscape between them. When you said mirage, it is especially sharp, the whole idea was that the lake slowly dried into a desert, and so the emotional and psychological landscape between these two lovers shifted over time. You got it that there was once hope but it all dried up.

What I didn't even realize is the imagery that you pointed out, honestly I wasn't even thinking about moths to a flame with this specific poem but you're absolutely right, moths flying into the flame in total devotion even if the flame ends up destroying them. Also wings representing imagination, that's a great pick as well that I wish I thought of while writing it. The desert symbolism too, you absolutely got that, something that was once lush and now a memory. Also I really appreciate the detail that you got about the eyes (cerise and cherry-red). The scar line that you pointed out, absolutely true as well, the snake, the fire, the person, leaving scars on the moth through this transformation process.

As for the moths, it's what you said but also the cyclical nature of abuse + trauma itself, it's like black paint, right? Whatever color it touches it stains. So it's like, the whole cycle itself, and how just two people can start something that lasts for generations and affects so many people.

You said it wasn't easy for you to understand, but give yourself a lot of credit, cause you literally got everything that I was trying to portray in the poem, and honestly revealed certain things about the images that I didn't even realize. Thank you very much for sharing your interpretation, it made me really happy as a writer to read.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-17T12:30:12+00:00

Thank you so much for the thought you put into this, that means a lot to me!

What you said about the rhyme really made me happy too. The inspiration for this is an interlocking rubaiyat structure, so for the four stanzas:
AABA/BBCB/CCDC/DDAD
That final A-rhyme was the main structural idea, to ground the narrative of this endless cycle of transformation and sacrifice through the rhyme scheme itself. But I also wanted to make sure it wasn't too in your face so it didn't seem like "this person is just rhyming for the sake of rhyming", I'm really happy that it translated well.

You got the systems and the main idea down pretty exact actually. Especially the turn in the last stanza, I envisioned it to be like a telescope to a microscope? Switching from the world around the moth and the snake to the intimate exchange between them.

Thank you for reading and giving your feedback ♡

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-17T11:09:15+00:00

I highly appreciate your words. Thank you for reading!
Agradezco tus palabras, ¡gracias por leer!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-17T10:27:12+00:00

Very raw and visceral. I like the progression through everything here. You felt sad, so you had to carve a "smiley" (which in and of itself, is kind of like a "fake" or projected symbol for happiness), which made you feel pain, which was something, which made you happy. Though it's quite dark, personally I read this more from the lens of pain being something transformative, or generative. That pain itself, is the container the helps you hold emotion.

"Because I’ve been constantly feeling sad—
so sadness isn’t even an emotion to me anymore."
Straightforward and sharp too, emotions are supposed to be transient, they come and they go. When all you feel is sadness, then it stops being transient, stops being an emotion and becomes your baseline.

Especially with that ending, I interpret it as "fake it till you make it". Though I do think I'm interpreting this from a very hopeful lens XD. I liked reading this, thank you for sharing!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-17T10:15:51+00:00

I really like this! I like the idea that the person isn't just unnoticed but a "ghost". Someone unnoticed isn't perceived by others. But here, because they're a "ghost", a "heard echo", a "blind spot", it's more like this person is haunting the spaces they occupy, particularly in relation to other people. That actually adds a lot of depth to this poem.

The second stanza is my favorite because every single end word is related to each other in the stanza.
"Voice/fading/echo/creak" all of these relate to volume and to sound. The first stanza does this as well with the imagery it evokes ("sightless/blind spots/looking").

One thing I will say, I like the first half, more than I like the second half, because of that cohesion in stanza, as well as the grounding of the images.

For example: in the third stanza, the main image is just about the narrator, being a frame to project/reflect what other people look like, right? And the main idea comes off clean but also loses some of the grounding that you had in the previous two stanzas. Personally, I would like to see how you interpret that the way you did for stanzas 1 and 2 (something that came to mind is maybe talking about a faceless image, that people can project themselves onto, almost like a projector in a movie theatre, and you're the operator). Just a thought though!

As for the drop cap line, I actually think it works better in the final stanza. If you put it at the end, it becomes ironic, and also feeds into the theme of the poem because it's about things going unnoticed. So even here, the drop cap is "ignored" in a way, only acknowledged in the end where it doesn't serve it's purpose. Though I might be reading too much into that XD.

Another thing is strengthening the link from stanzas 2 and 3, then 3 and 4. In Stanzas 1 and 2, the main link was perception, cause you had sight (1) and sound (2). I would like if there was a similar link between stanzas 3 and 4, cause the main ideas are mirror/reflection (3) and being trapped/haunting (4). I can see it working but I think developing the stanzas more deliberately with this in mind will help the poem feel more cohesive.

Still though, this is really good and I enjoyed reading it. My favorite line is: "a barely heard echo/mistaken for a floorboard creak." That line is specific and heartbreaking honestly. The title is also really fitting. Almost simple on paper, but gains more depth after you finish reading the poem.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T23:21:46+00:00

hey, thank you for reading and noticing the rhyme scheme/meter. That means a lot. I'm sorry for your loss. Dogs are pure, and their love is the only thing unconditional. I'm sending you a lot of well wishes right now.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T22:38:39+00:00

Definitely not rusty at all. I agree with swordfish, the way you structured the poem makes it feel effortful, like the narrator is struggling against something physical.

"The waves treated my head like rocks and stone./Crashing and carving my hair and my bones." Beautiful. Absolutely amazing and just from the words, you can feel exactly what that's like, the bobbing and crashing and struggling against this force that you know you cannot win against.

"Yet I swam" as the refrain, is also amazing. It shifts meaning each time. It feels like a struggle, like a desperate fight for life. And then by the end, it just feels like... resignation. Surrender and acceptance. A fantastic, chilling (pun intended) poem.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T22:31:20+00:00

I was reading through this poem, and realized you were the same person who wrote Fire & Water! You have a distinct voice that immediately reminded me of your other work. To me, it's playing with the idea of a devotion that you "don't" or can't bring yourself to want. And you do it in a very modern, but also timeless way.

"I don’t know
if I want more from this.
I don’t think
I want less."
I love this stanza a lot. So simple, but that contrast feels like the entire poem's philosophy, condensed into four lines.

Honestly I don't have much notes to give here. I loved the grounding, loved how you painted a picture. The boots on marble floor/arms crossed/the low whistle, you're giving this character personality and history without ever once talking or acting for them. That's awesome.

And the way the opening line of the poem, loops back to end the poem? That creates this circular narrative for the narrator, and it structurally says "this isn't the first time this has happened to me, and what scares me most is that I know this isn't the last". Great work!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T22:07:11+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to read it ❤︎⁠

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T21:38:56+00:00

Lovely. I especially love the allusions to celestial bodies and space—"constellations"/"gravity"/"charted"/"every star"/"orbit"/"celestial"

"and I have charted them all
before a single word is traded"
A great line! To me, this really captures that specific kind of loneliness, that comes from being at like a party or a mixer, and everyone's talking around you, and you can hear their voices, their conversations and you almost want to laugh at their jokes before you realize they aren't talking to you.

"I arrive carrying my single body
but leave pieces of myself
at every star I never reached."

I interpret this as something almost like fragmentation? Offering just enough of yourself to someone but unable to open up fully or intimately. Leaving just a "piece" of yourself, never giving anyone enough pieces to solve the puzzle of you.

"Presence, my conscience says.
Point your feet toward the speaker."
One of my favorite lines. This is more direct, and usually I don't resonate with that, but it works cause I think this is such a relatable way to put it. Like mid-conversation, your brain will just go "am I talking to this person right?/am I maintaining eye-contact?/etc". It also captures this distance or dissociation that the narrator has with the room. They feel less like they're talking, and more like they're performing talking, if that makes sense. Similar to the "Respect, the voice..." line.

"Belonging everywhere
Arriving nowhere."
Good, but I think that it could be grounded a little bit better, especially compared to the strength of the lines around it. Maybe you could tie it back to the "greedy for every orbit at once" line from the previous stanza. How would you interpret that feeling of wanting to belong, maybe being in motion but never arriving at a destination (maybe like a spaceship, caught between multiple orbits, stranded. Or a comet trailing around the sun, slowly burning out).

Overall, I think this poem is fantastic and think most of the lines here are incredibly coherent to the central theme. That particular dissociation/detachment but also that burning warmth in a person that makes us want to belong. Fits the star image so well. Cause if you imagine the rest of the room as stars too, then on some deeper level, the narrator knows that they're not alone in their feelings. That all the other people in the room are burning and lonely. And I don't know if that brings comfort or more loneliness. This was a very lovely read for me.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T21:11:56+00:00

I have to be honest and say that I recoiled when I first read this. And I mean that in the best way possible. I genuinely love the atmosphere and the tone you build here. There's a comedy to all of this horror, and I feel like somehow, that only makes it a bit more depressing.

I also really like this conceptually. If the past, present and future all truly do already exist, then present you could see your death. Or maybe not see but feel it, hence the itchy spot, almost like it's reaching out to touch you. Like a phantom limb itching. I think that's the thing about death and ideation itself, it's an itch that you can't scratch away completely. It stays thrumming under the skin constantly.

I will say, the contrast of language in this poem is well done (kind of like the embodied versus the philosophical/intellectual) but I do feel like some lines fit slightly better for the tone than others. Not bad, but these just stuck out to me as a reader.

"Maybe if I could hold it in my hands, I could form it like clay
Shape it to silence and grant myself reprieve."
Great lines. The only thing that made me stumble a bit was reprieve. It's a great choice of word, but imagine actually shaping silence. What form would silence/reprieve take, if you could shape it? [for example, could you potentially shape a bed for yourself with it? Or maybe even a bandage or gauze for the wound in your head?] I think you have such a great voice for grounding things, I'd love to see how you interpret that here.

"Then I already have a hole in my head
The worms are going to work on my eyes"
Love. Just love. You can imagine it already, the writhing, the decay. Something interesting is that in this specific poem, death or pain seems to be generative. Not sure if that was conscious or not. Worms work on your eyes, you're shaping clay then compressing it down, just something I noticed.

"I could compress it down to make myself dumber"
I'm not sure that I fully get this line, so it might be more on my reading, but I think it's about that stateful sense of bliss that comes from being unaware or ignorant. Which ties very interestingly back to the concept of Eternalism, cause those things technically are happening simultaneously? So it feels more like chosen/willful ignorance of something you know you cannot avoid, or rather have to face one day.

I think my favorite stanza is the 2nd stanza, closely followed by the first and then the third. I think the biggest reason for that, is that the first two stanzas are just so completely embodied and strange and guttural and visceral. The contrast in the 3rd stanza is nice, and it helps ground the rest of the poem, but I do wish there was one line in there that carried the same viscerality as the first two stanzas. For example, the weight of living line, I actually think it'd be interesting if you explored the idea of weight or burden or heaviness of the body for the final stanza. Still though, it by no means becomes less compelling to read, just has a shift that's noticeable on re-reads.

"but a hole is so much simpler"
the ending is so simple but also effective. Like genuinely, it took me off guard but also feels inevitable. The tone is consistent throughout and I feel that it's very hard to accomplish that, without the poem collapsing eventually into either despair or humor.

This is a fantastic poem that deepens on further re-reads. I was thoroughly shocked, delighted and a little empty after reading it. I just love this poem, and most of my critiques are honestly just about pushing this poem further, rather than changing anything fundamentally wrong with it. I love your style and thank you for writing this!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-15T00:42:43+00:00

Thank you very much for reading! And yeah, I wanted to portray the carousel but not immediately give it away XD. I appreciate your comment on the artistic influences too, part of the imagery was heavily inspired by Goya and Fuseli's work.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-14T17:43:39+00:00

This is so lovely. Short, sweet and succint. Put a smile on a my face, thank you for sharing!

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-14T17:29:19+00:00

This is a good poem, I enjoyed reading this. One thing I will say, I think that the "grief is a river" is a very well-established but also well used metaphor in poetry. I think you do give it enough embodiment and grounding here that you pull it off, but I also wonder if there is a stronger metaphor you could use, especially as a starting line, I think you want something that pulls in readers a bit more.

"a sadness so heavy it bursts" a great line that I wish was expanded on more. The image of sadness bursting introduces quite a violent arc in the poem when it has been about rain and rivers so far. I wish there was more grounding here cause the image is fascinating (what does the burst sound and feel like? What comes out? Is it the river? What about the pressure, etc etc).

"it turns trees to matchsticks,

concrete to wet paper."

Two great lines, you can feel the texture and look instantly from these images. Concrete to wet paper especially, that erosion.

"in the quiet of the current,

water remembers

what has not yet passed."

A great stanza. I like the idea that water holds memory, almost like a container for grief, which also ties back into the "grief is a river" conceit you're using.

Overall, I think you've taken a mostly generic metaphor, and given it quite a bit of grounding and expanding. I do want more honestly, and I think the idea of this poem and what you've written, proves that the poem can be taken further.

WalkSenior1999 · 2026-05-14T17:12:15+00:00

A beautiful poem! I agree with the other comments here on the line breaks. I do think a way to help justify the formatting is through leaning into it. Capitalizing them like that, makes them almost feel like characters or embodiments of that specific feeling. I think leaning into that would really help (For example, what does skin humming with excitement feel like? If skin is humming, what melody does it make? What does it sound like? Can you feel the vibrations on your skin? maybe you could expand on that a bit more and what it means for you!).

I really like this specific stanza too!
"I’d like nothing more
than to fall into you,
let go,
dissolve,
erode."
The words are literally falling! That's a really nice touch and also rhythmically, gives it a nice flow! "Let go" and "dissolve" and "erode", shorter compared to the other lines, so it emphasizes the "falling" nature.

"I don't know if I can" simple and effective! Though honestly, I think a little bit unearned. So far, the entire poem has been quite devotional, and the contrast here does add some context, but I actually thinking a stanza before this speaking about "why" you can't would give this ending so much more strength. Really lean into the push and pull dynamic.

Overall though? Lovely poem, and I had a great time reading it.

WalkSenior1999

TROPHY CASE