Published June 13, 2008
Under redrafting.
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141,312 Literary Works • 674,342 Reviews
The first thing I notice are the line breaks:
They're too short for me - it makes your lines jumpy and hard to read. Try reading it out loud and see if you notice anything. Some of your other lines, where you repeat things like "every" work real well with the line breaks, but here it stops the flow entirely. "on pain of execution" is a strange phrase, and I think you should find something stronger. Pain is an incredebly vague word, and you want to inject this poem with as much emotion as possible to counterbalance the lack of emotion in it. Choose your words carefully. Speaking of choosing, because to the original topic - choose your line breaks carefully, too. Think about how your line breaks will affect the reader. Often times I'll break apart sentences in places where it creates, for the reader, two meanings, and give the poem more life. Try to keep that in mind when you're putting in your line breaks.The double negative here makes my stomach churn.
I'm not sure what I think of this poem. I have a feeling it is about drugs, but it's so vague. The moment, overdose? But you're so vague about it, and you're speaking to someone - but the way it is done makes me think you are speaking, in a way, back to the speaker. The speaker is talking to himself, that is.
The reason this poem is hard for me to like is because it leaves a lot to be desired. You're talking about how the speaker, or the person the speaker it talking to (the You) did it to themselves, but you don't get into anything that I can feel. By the end of this, what emotion do you want me to have? Because I currently have nothing. This is just lacking real oomph. There is no big bang anywhere in it. Maybe you should focus only one stanza on the fact that the person did it to themselves, and focus the rest on making the emotions stand out - I'm not sure which emotions, but you need to add something to this poem. It just needs something more.
Best of luck! If you have a question about something I said, feel free to PM me.