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What Caught My Eye

The title and description are what caught my eye for sure. It's a powerful sort of topic.

Favorite Aspects

Honestly, you have lots of slick poetry techniques in here. I particularly liked the use of "mother's womb" and "life of doom". The flow of those lines is really on point AND it's a good use of rhyme in a non-rhyming poem.

Hook
In my reviews, I like to focus a bit on the opening line(s) of a poem. Sometimes, people forget that a good hook is as important for a poem as it is for a story. It might be more important, in fact. Given the length of a poem, the intro (that hook) is a considerable percentage of the piece as a whole. It needs to be both functional and interesting to serve its purposes.

If I was reading for pleasure rather than to review, I'd have cut out after the first two lines. It almost works but just... doesn't for me. The "grasping" instead of "gasping" felt like a mistake rather than a clever change to a cliche.

Second, you take your last breath and THEN struggle for air? The first line would imply that everything that follows happens in the seconds between the last breath and actual death. But this is a bit long and wordy to really feel like that's the case.

Language / Word Choice

Great use of assonance throughout. Again, some of the common techniques were used really well.

I am missing some figurative language... some imagery. Either would be helpful. I'm also missing language that's truly emotive. To be honest, most of this is written in boring, everyday language. "But, didn't they hear that all the slaves were decreed free", for example... and the following line. The only powerful word choices are actually pretty dull and overused in this type of poel. "free/freedom/liberty". Heck, you overused "free(dom)" until it nearly lost all meaning just within this poem. 8 times? And another in the title? I get that that's the important point here, but they're not deliberately placed or used in different ways. A few are used almost as a name/proper noun... but they're not distinguished form all the other uses.

That's where the word choice falls flat. There are some lines in here that reminded me of School House Rock. Like, educational for those who might not know... but not super unique.

It might be more effective to really create a visual for the dying person and then for slavery... and then talk about freedom. Progressing like a story almost, rather than just... kinda feeling like the same thing was being said from beginning to end.

Effect

This could be more effective. You have some nice moments, but as a whole... it doesn't feel like it added anything personal or new to the discussion. Yanno? I sorta feel like I've read this before in just a persuasive essay or something. Taking it from general to personal (how has any of this affected YOU? Tell us in specific terms/scenes/images... it would help the audience connect. That's my two cents.





My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .