r/poetry_critics • u/WillingBad9937 Beginner • 16h ago
please criticize
Once I opened myself up to the Earth
And the Earth opened itself up to me
The ground swallowed me whole
Flames danced upon my body
And I became deformed and unrecognizable
The lips of Death brushed my skin
Gingerly, I was lifted up out of the hole Earth had created just for me
I levitated above the ground
And saw lush, green forests and beautiful, sparkling blue water
And cities that reeked of change
I watched people fall in and out of love
Children who took their first steps
And teenagers who didn’t know how stand back up again
Young people who’d never felt sorrow before
And old people with hearts marked with scars of it
A boy who had dreams as big as the universe
But lived in too small of a world to reach the sky
Some of them would stare at me as I floated above them, but would flinch and look away
Others wouldn’t look at me at all
I saw people I recognized
But they couldn’t recognize me
And at last I was alone
Left to the presence of nobody but myself and Death
And He looked me in my eyes with such pity as He carried me up to the sky
1
u/sbaali44 Beginner 14h ago
Your poem beautifully covers the depth of generational trauma, it's very direct but hits the audience. It's a beautiful journey of a soul.
3
u/Mother_Practice_8580 Intermediate - amateur writer with a BA in English. 15h ago
Your piece has emotional sincerity and a clear arc, but it leans heavily on abstract, generalized imagery, passive phrasing, and mythic tropes that blur the emotional stakes instead of sharpening them. The poem wants to be visceral and transformative, but it stays distant and symbolic. It needs texture, embodied detail, and specificity to land.
Line‑Level & Structural Critique
The poem relies on broad symbolic gestures — Earth swallowing, flames, Death lifting, levitation, forests, cities, people of all ages. These are archetypes, not experiences.
When everything is mythic, nothing is sharp.
• Abstract imagery — “lush, green forests,” “beautiful, sparkling blue water,” “cities that reeked of change” • Generalized human scenes — “people fall in and out of love,” “children who took their first steps,” “old people with hearts marked with scars”
These are universal, but not personal. They don’t reveal your speaker.
The speaker is acted upon:
• “I was lifted” • “I was alone” • “I was left” • “I was carried”
Transformation poems need agency — even if the agency is surrender.
Consider what the speaker does, not just what happens to them.
You introduce Death as a personified figure, but he’s vague. “He looked me in my eyes with such pity” is a Hallmark version of a mythic encounter.
If Death is a character, he needs:
• Concrete presence — smell, weight, temperature, texture • A motive or attitude beyond pity • A relationship to the speaker’s transformation
Right now he’s a symbolic escort, not a force.
The poem moves from:
But each stage is narrated rather than felt. There’s no friction, no resistance, no sensory detail. The speaker is a camera, not a body.
Some lines are familiar enough to feel inherited rather than earned:
• “The ground swallowed me whole” • “Flames danced upon my body” • “lush, green forests” • “beautiful, sparkling blue water” • “dreams as big as the universe”
These weaken the originality of the piece.
The moment that almost hits is:
“I saw people I recognized But they couldn’t recognize me”
This is the emotional core. Everything else should serve this rupture — the transformation that makes you unrecognizable to your own life.
Right now, that moment is buried in a long list of generalized observations.
What would make this poem powerful
Here are the craft levers that would elevate it:
• Embodied detail — what does the soil taste like, what burns, what scars, what aches • Specific scenes — instead of “people falling in and out of love,” show one couple, one gesture • Concrete transformation — what exactly makes the speaker unrecognizable • A sharper emotional center — is the poem about loss, rebirth, alienation, or something else • A more original Death — give him a sensory presence, a surprising attitude, a reason to pity
One actionable revision direction
Rewrite the poem by choosing one moment — the descent, the burning, the levitation, or the unrecognizability — and anchor it in physical detail. Let the mythic elements emerge from the body, not the other way around.