Peaceful destruction

Index:

1. Grammar/spelling
2. Meter and Flow
3. Rhymes
4. Content

(Note: I had to add this index halfway through the writing process because the Meter and Flow section takes up around two pages.)

1. Let's start with the grammar and spelling, since that's the easiest part of the review.
...
Aaaand done. I didn't find any objective mistakes. (Now do you see why it's the easiest part of the review most of the time? Heh.)

2. Okay, I'll go with the meter and overall syllable flow next, going in order from top to bottom.

I should warn you beforehand, I test the flow by reading it to myself, so it isn't exactly objective. I give you a possible solution based upon what I think would sound good, so, basically, take these revisions with as many grains of salt as you want.

In addition, I review the meter of every single stanza in the piece. Why? Because I can.

And also because I’m OCD like that. Don’t question it.

It's the harmony of nature,
The sweet melody of spring,
A kiss in the shadow
Of an ever growing sin.

This stanza is mostly well-metered, but there is a bit of a conflict between 'A kiss in the shadow/of an ever growing sin'. (It's a great pair, by the way - in my opinion, the metaphor is really cool.) The first line, 'A kiss in the shadow', has six syllables. 'Of an ever growing sin' has seven.

To balance this, you can add a syllable to the first line. However, adding a single syllable to a line can be difficult, especially if it's short, so I made both lines longer to match each other instead. Another method would be to simply reword the second line to make it shorter. Take these two examples.

A kiss in the deep, wide shadow
Of a constantly growing sin.
OR
A kiss in the shadow.
Of my own growing sin.

Next up:

The muted crash and tumble
Of watchtowers falling to war.
The nature of destruction
Is always wanting more

I love how you point out that the 'nature of destruction/Is always wanting more'. That's true in more ways than one.

Now, the first and second lines clash a bit, mostly because of the inclusion of 'watchtowers'. If you wanted to reword that so you made the syllables flow, you could try doing something like this.

The muted crashing and rending asunder
Of the watchtowers' collapse to the core

And you can still rhyme 'core' with 'more' at the end of the stanza.

More than you've ever had.
More than you'll ever know.
Leaving you restless at night.
Lying sleepless - fear and delight

Psych! It's actually a couplet. Anyway, this line is good, but there's a better way to execute the dash.

Lying sleepless with fear and delight

Of course, that's only better in my opinion, but I think it flows better than a pause.

I don't hear my watchtowers fall,
But I see the debris littering the floor,
Your lingering semblance in my head,
Your joyful tangling of every thread.

This stanza needs a bit of adjustment.

I don't hear my own watchtowers fall,
But I see debris littered over the floor.

The second line had a few too many syllables.

Your lingering semblance in my head,
Joyful tangling of every thread.

Since you've already said 'your' at the first line, you can drop it and lose a syllable in order to make them match.

Our fleeting interactions
Are nothing like they used to be,
Soft advances, fierce dances,
Only enticing me to flee.

The second line works because it’s only a syllable off, but it doesn’t sound as natural as it could be. You would still be able to reword it by trying something like this.

Our fleeting interactions
Aren't the same, won't ever be
Soft advances, fierce dances,
Enticing me to flee.

It flows better now that the second line matches. I removed a syllable from the last one to help the meter, although it’s only a minor concern.

It's a peaceful destruction,
A never ending siege,
This game of seduction
You're inflicting on me.

I would just add a couple of syllables to the last two lines.

This warring game of seduction
That you’re inflicting on me.

I apologize if I haven't been descriptive of what exactly has been wrong and why the solution was suggested, but matching up meter and flow by manipulating stressed and unstressed syllables is more of an instinctive thing for me, so it's very hard to describe sometimes.

If I need to understand why it sounds better, I can analyze the structure of each line, but I’m usually too lazy to do that and just go with my gut instinct, which I’ve learned to trust over the years.

3. On to the rhymes:

‘Spring’ and ‘sin’ are an interesting couple, to be sure. However, it works well enough, and wording it differently would be difficult considering the content of the lines that they come after.

You have a couple of surprise couplets in there, stanzas that start out normally and end with two lines that rhyme. I’m not sure whether they add or detract from the piece, so you can keep them in there if you want. However, just be aware that they’re a little jolting when reading them for the first time.

4. On to the actual content:

This is an extremely interesting poem with a lot of masterful figurative language. I really like the different imagery examples and metaphors, including the fact that the whole piece is actually a metaphor.

‘The harmony of nature/The sweet melody of spring’ is an awesome pair of lines in my opinion, since I’m somewhat of a nature fan myself.

Like I also said above, I enjoyed the line about ‘the nature of destruction’ being the state of ‘always wanting more’. It’s true because destruction is a hunger that is never satisfied, but it’s also true because ‘always wanting more’, or being unendingly greedy, will eventually lead to one’s destruction.

I always loved things with double meanings.

Conclusion: In short, you’ve done a great job with this poem. I’m definitely going to read more of your stuff in the future, though I’ll try not to leave an entire three-page review next time.

Oh, who am I kidding? The next one will probably be five pages with my OCD habits.

Thanks for taking the time to read,
-Crunch

I see you have written a poem.

This poem is very indecisive with its rhyme scheme. You keep changing them scheme every stanza or so, and I don't think it's intentional nor does it add anything to the poem. In fact, it just makes it annoying.
Your first two stanzas follow the ABCB scheme then your third and fourth one go ABCC which too be honest, if it was intentional, I really don't think it helps and may have been a poor choice.

Watch our for punctuation. Since you've used it, you need to make sure you don't miss any. For example the missing full-stop at the end of the second stanza.

Some of your lines feel slightly more forced than others. For example:

The muted crash and tumble
Of watchtowers falling to war.

That bolded line feels quite hunky compared to the rhythm you had established prior to it. It's possibly because of an extra syllable but if you think or read it out loud it is quite jarring. When writing your own things you often read and hear it over and over and over again so much that it becomes normal to you and it simply sounds right. However to first time readers it doesn't, and they tend to read it only once or twice. (Speaking as a composer who does that all the time.)


Your entire poem... 'peaceful destruction' to be honest I have absolutely no idea what its about. I see a lot of pretty words mashed up together, but it doesn't give me a feeling. It doesn't give me a meaning. I could deduce several scenarios of what this is about. The first one I would assume the most is that it's being some sort of love poem about someone breaking down your defences with love, but it's not marked as romantic, and that doesn't quite seem to fit your style.

You speak about destruction as most probably a metaphor, or at least peaceful as a metaphor, or I don't even know. The least you could do it provide the reader with a genre or category so we have so clue as to what it is, for example if it was health then it could be an illness. If it was romance, well romance, if it was political, then politicians peacefully destroying things. But nope. You just went general general.

I really feel this needs more clarity, and needs some though into what it's telling the reader. It just feels so ambiguous to start with that we can't really connect to it.

Hi, Auxii!

So I like a lot of the images and juxtapositions you've got going on here, but honestly, it's quite difficult to understand.

First of all, I'm not a big fan of rhyming poems. I'm just telling you that up front-- if I make a comment that doesn't make sense about the rhyme, sorry about it ^_^

I'm going to go through stanza by stanza and give you my thoughts.
1.
The first two lines are nice, but I try to avoid starting poems with it because we've already started out not knowing what the poem is about. Poems that reveal the subject at the end of the poem are very difficult to write well because the reader can be easily lost in the poem, not knowing what it's about until the end.
The second two lines are okay. I like the juxtaposition between the innocence of spring and sin. However, again, not knowing the subject of the poem is again causing issues. The kiss is in the shadow of the sin, which means the kiss is not the sin, but the sin is looming over the kiss. The way it's written, however, you compare "it" to the kiss, but I don't know what it is. Therefore, the metaphors in the first stanza make no sense to the reader at all. And what is the sin? There are a lot of things in this stanza that add up to one half of a metaphor.

2.
In the second line, the meter is thrown off by watchtowers. Since you use that word later in the poem, maybe try to find a less syllable rich word to use there that means the same things.

The nature of destruction

Here, we have "nature" again. You use it in the first stanza, and either 1) it was deliberate, and you're using nature symbolically, but I'm not really getting it, or 2) it was an accident, in which case, a different word should be used as to not create confusion.
The rhyme in the last line of this stanza seems a bit forced. Also, the last line grammatically is referring to nature, which I don't know if you meant to do; nature wants more. But does it? Did you want the nature of destruction to be a quality of a person or something? And if that person has that quality, they always want more? It's a bit confusing.

3.
The first two lines of this stanza feel a bit contentless to me. They have a nice meter, but they don't feel like they're accomplishing anything much.
In this stanza, you also change the rhyme scheme. I suggest keeping it uniform, but you know, do what you want.
In the last line, I think it would work better if you used "with" instead of a dash. The meter would sound a bit better.

4.
This stanza has the same rhyme scheme as the preceding stanza, and it still feels weird after the consistent abcb that you had going on.

Your joyful tangling of every thread.

Okay, so now we have a third thing to focus on. We have watchtowers, spring, (which stand for guards/war and peace, respectively) and now we have threads. Also, are threads of thought? What are the threads of? If you keep this image, I'd clarify it.

5.
You use "fleeting" and "flee" in the same stanza, and I think you should change one since they're so similar and so close in proximity to each other. I like the last line. Enticing generally means that it's drawing someone in, but flee means to get away. It properly illustrates the conflict in the narrator's emotions.

6.
Ah, we finally get to know what the poem is about. And it's love! Kinda!
While there are a lot of poems about love, I think this one has nice symbols that really illustrate it in a unique manner. Honestly, I'd introduce your topic much, much earlier in the poem. The poem could be about almost anything, so you really need to.

I think something that would improve the clarity of your poem altogether is using complete sentences. While it's okay to use fragments stylistically, they're like a spice that you add to a soup. Too much spice ruins the soup, but just enough makes the person eating it think, wow, what is that? It's really nice! So make a few more complete sentences so you don't set reader's mouths on fire.

I hope that this proves useful to you! It's not the way I normally review, but I feel that this is the best way I could have done it. Have a great day, and keep poeting!