Hah, I thought I was on the money!

RE: rose, try fiddling with other symbols. Other flowers would work OK, but wouldn't really fix the saccharine quality of the image. Flowers and death have been done to... death, anyways. See Neruda.

The title and the rose are literally the only two things I’m still not 100% happy with lol

Now I normally like long titles but I fear this one spoils the plot a tad bit. There's great opportunity for a turn in this poem toward grief--the reader realizing that it's the grandmother ('s spirit or memory or referent grief) that's interred in the garden. As you have it, that's over and done with before we even get to the poem. No moment of discovery. Calling it "Garden" or "The Garden" would suffice IMO.

On content: some good images here. I worry about the rose being perhaps trite. Love the blackberry jam (I'd recently written a poem about death with blackcurrant jam in it! Cool coinky-dink) and the turn toward the lush at the end--life in death. That move is working (though that pesky rose thorns its way back into the frame!).

i find it beautiful im not good at peotry but good at reading u are good.

The progression of this story was excellent. Not only progression of time but, also of emotion was really well expresses. Thank you for sharing :)

You want to leave two spaces at the end of your first line, then do a single space down to the next. 

Like this. 

Line 1. “Space. Space.”  
Line 2.

Totally unrelated to anything, but I'm struggling with the reddit editor, so thought I'd try asking for advice! How did you get each line of your poem to not have additional spacing between adjacent lines? I tried to post something but I can't get the lines to be single spaced

I love this—the visual imagery of the "wells in soil" equaling "wells in flour" was so fresh and so apt.

I think I found the first four stanzas stronger than the last three.

>With the first Cardinal song of AprilI will reach my hands into clay, making wellsand plant a wooden rosary, a jar of blackberry jam.

I think the length of the last line in this stanza threw me off a little, rhythmically. Also "Cardinal" being capitalized threw me off as well.

The last two stanzas are not as powerful as the first set, but I still like them, and I like the return of the rose! I saw another reviewer suggest the rose might feel a little cliche, which I can also see. Perhaps simply swapping the rose to another type of flower, one that's a little less "done", would be an easy fix?

Edit: Lol, I see that same commenter also already suggested switching to another type of flower... Guess I don't have that much useful/new feedback to add. Thank you for sharing your poetry with us!

Your beautiful title was what drew me in to read the poem , now 3 times. This is so nice in every way! Thank you for it! :)

This is so kinesthetic a look at grieving and loss and nostalgia. Perhaps because I have lost both of my grandmothers - or perhaps because I have such physical memories of them - this is less sad and more comforting. At least for me.

I’ve learned that people respond to concrete details, that specificity is the true “universal.” Thanks for reading 💚

I love this poem it makes my heart ache. I lost my grandmother and this poem feels so specific yet so universal.


Hello readers, welcome to OCpoetry. This subreddit is a writing workshop community -- a place where poets of all skill levels can share, enjoy, and talk about each other's poetry. Every person who's shared, including the OP above, has given some feedback (those are the links in the post) and hopes to receive some in return (from you, the readers).

If you really enjoyed this poem and just want to drop a quick comment, to show some appreciation or give kudos, things like "great job!" or "made me cry", or "loved it" or "so relateable", please do. Everyone loves a compliment. Thanks for taking the time to read and enjoy.

If you want to share your own poem, you'll need to give this writer some detailed feedback. Good feedback explains from your point of view what it was like to read the poem, and then tries to explain how the poem made you feel like that. If you're not sure what that means, check out our [feedback guide](https://new.reddit.com/r/ocpoetry/wiki/feedbackcritiques), or look 

The Garden Where I Plant My Grief (Revised)