how to discern gardens from woodland

Hello Coffeeism,

I don't think I've ever thought so deeply about gardening before. I never even thought about how old gardens are. Because of this poem, I find myself on the "History of gardening" Wikipedia page, which I did not realize existed before!

Overall, I really enjoy the imagery in this poem, and I think I get the gist of what you were going for, but there are a few questions that this poem has raised for me that I think can be answered by a more focused execution of the poem.

In the first stanza, I believe you're speaking of a hedge maze. Because you put the years in there, I went ahead and searched for some basic historical information about hedge mazes. Wikipedia, not that it's the most reliable source of information, says that the first hedge maze was built around 1460. That doesn't really line up with the date that you provided, but maybe I'm missing something. I know that this is more metaphorical than historical, but if you're going to put specific dates, people will look up information. I also stumbled upon something a little earlier called a knot garden. It's not within this time period still, but I'm wondering if you were speaking of these instead? Either way, I think the imagery in this stanza is wonderfully dark and brooding.

The second stanza doesn't have as much imagery, and I think that's a shame. I really liked what you had going, and I kind of want a little more about the statues here. Something in their feeling or appearance that suggests they're stuck in the simpler time. I don't have a prescription to change this, but something feels lackluster here. I do like the last line in the stanza about Persephone. It really resonated with me.

when it all comes down

Hi Coffee! Here for a review; I haven't looked at poetry in a while, so apologies if I'm a bit rusty.

I feel like this is a really strong concept for a poem, but I'd like to see a bit of what was happening socially at these times that drove people to make these changes to garden architecture. I know this is more metaphorical than literal, but since you're basing this off real history and real periods of gardening, it might be a good idea to have some strips in-between as well for transitions.

You've also, at the end, written 1550-1800 and 1700-1900. I'm not sure if that overlap is purposeful, just thought I'd point it out for you.

You have a few lines in here that feel awkward to me, and I think it's because of the tense this poem is written in. Present tense can be difficult to pull off, and while I think this poem does it spectacularly for the most part, a few lines -- the ones you've written in past and past perfect -- feel a little out of place. I'd recommend taking a look at the first two lines of the second stanza, and the third and fourth lines of the third stanza, to see if there's any way to make those flow a little better.

You start a lot of your lines with conjunctions, which I think is adding to my issues with the flow in this poem. There's no real punch to any of the lines, and they all feel soft and blurry with the lines before and after them. This is something I think is a diction issue, and stronger word choice would preclude the need to have the conjunctions, much less have them beginning the lines.

The last line especially -- "as it splits the pavement gently" -- feels anticlimactic to a poem that is, effectively, about the entirety of US/European gardening habits. I think that in this case, it feels very passive, and you could go about making it more active in that "the pavement splits for chaos", finding different ways to phrase that idea.

I recommend messing around with the phrasing in this poem, picking different words and different orders to put them in, until you find a word/word order that gives it a bit more punch. As it is, it's a really good concept, but I find it pretty lackluster in execution. Keep writing!

Does this count as a review? I'm counting it as a review.
This poem is rad as hell, I just. Waving my arms around frantically right now. Even Grammarly couldn't find the right verb for it. GOD. I love the imagery. I'd hang this on my wall. Or in my greenhouse. It's so good. I loved it. Besides the date on the fifth section being from 1700-1900, which is a bit weird because you already covered the 1700s between 1550-1800, that was a little annoying. And I think it would've been interesting to see the 2000s covered, with all of the environmental challenges ahead of us. But the rest was excellent! I love how the rhythm is chaotic and controlled at the same time. I'm curious, is it intentional or did I just read into it too much?