Hey, Matt! Here to give you that review I owe you. Let me break this whole thing down as I'm looking at it -- I'll be focusing mainly on technique and efficiency in this review rather than grammar and whatnot.
However, to start us off, your use of tense is kind of wonky in the first stanza. I know someone else pointed this out, but in context with the rest of the poem, "can tell" really doesn't work -- it drags the reader out and makes them aware these are just words on a page. "I could tell" might work better, or "I knew" as another reviewer suggested.
So first off as far as efficiency goes, I'll let you know that I'm not really a big poetry kind of person. Especially not romantic poetry. I don't know, there's something about written romance that just doesn't connect with me -- I understand that you're trying to get your feelings across about someone you loved, but I can't dredge those feelings up in myself. So be warned, a lot of my emotional critique is likely to come from that.
This seems really disjointed. Yeah, you reinforce the ocean throughout the rest of the poem, but these first two stanzas are awkward and have nothing to do with each other. The ocean and the sun may be related, but you haven't given us that relationship, and you haven't given us something to build off of. You could tie it into the sunset/sunrise reflecting off the water, but as it is, all we have is "sun". And while you make it obvious it's about her hair -- so our mystery woman is blonde -- it feels...I don't know, a little awkward, because the sun itself doesn't really "flow". Sunshine can flow, rays of sunlight even, but the sun itself is pretty stationary.by the blue of her eyes
I can tell she came to me
from the ocean
I could not help but to admire
the sun in full view,
that flowed down to her shoulders
She would cut me? Me, specifically? You already have your first-person I/me and third-person she/her in this poem, so let's keep it that way. Complicating it into three viewpoints, including the reader as "you", is another stylistic choice I don't feel quite works. Maybe consider making this a first-person statement -- "she was not perfect/given the occasion she slashed my feet like seashells" or something like that.she was not perfect, but rather,
would cut you upon occasion, like sea shells
Um. Okay? This feels like a line too long -- you could combine the salmon into the descriptor of "pink", as in "her salmon-pink lips full", something in that line of thought, to cut down unnecessary fat in the wordcount here. Not to mention, "reminding me of salmon" is kind of...awkward phrasing. Makes me go "and? why should I care?", which is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve here.yet her steps were graced
with the beauty of waves
and her lips
pink and full,
reminding me of salmon
Remove the "I felt like" for greater emotional effect here: "and when we danced/I floated above the seafloor", you can add something about shipwrecks or seaweed or something else oceany too if you want.and when we danced,
I felt like I was floating
above the seafloor
Remember: The point of a poem is not to say "I felt like this", or "it felt like she was this". The point is to say "I was this", or "she was this". She did not feel like the ocean, she was the ocean (or she came to you from the ocean? You differ in how you describe that). She did not look like sunlight, she was sunlight. You did not feel like you were floating, you were floating. Removing the "feels like" parts of descriptors strengthens them and gives the reader a better grasp of the emotional impact.
Aside from that? This poem feels incomplete. I enjoy it on a base, shallow level, seeing how it can be improved, but I can't enjoy it as a full piece. It has a beginning in the echo of the title in the first line, but it doesn't have a real ending, thus why I didn't critique the last stanza, because all I'd have to say is it's not finished. "she became another's" feels like a middle line -- what does the narrator do after that? How does it affect the speaker? Do they sit on an ocean shore at nighttime and mourn the loss of the sun? Do they listen to the wind whistling through the rocks, do they skip stones against the receding tide, what do they do?
Do they protest her leaving, or do they numbly accept it, and how can you show that in a way that's thematically matched to the rest of the poem?
This piece left me with more questions than answers, and not in a solid, introspective way. It's not weak, but it's far from strong.
Keep writing!
Points: 50
Reviews: 425
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