greek toxin

Hi there!

This was an interesting poem to read and ponder over. I'll give you some of my comments and suggestions that I had while reading.

Title
I would also suggest a title change like @herbgirl- I mean, it'd be odd to call a poem about Elvis or Abraham Lincoln's deaths "American Toxin" America is a lot more than one guy's death. Don't forget Greece is a whole cultural and historical identity and although Plato & Socrates are essential units of that identity - does Socrates' death and your personal experience really define the whole country even today? Using a culture as a title is just more loaded than this poem's message in my opinion.

Socrates?
It also bothers me that your description of Socrates death is so unlike what is described in Plato. You are free to take some creative license here of course, but your parallel with Socrates sort of falls short if you're just making up all the parallel's from your own mind. Where are the shackles coming from? A lot of the details just don't add up. For instance, Socrates was incredibly calm in his death whereas reading the rest of your poem seems to be panicky. You say in your comment that you're trying to make your poem reflect a poison that looks quiet but is much more painful inside - but I'm not sure I see where you're reflecting the quietness and even nobleness of Socrates' death. I just see the pain and bodily gruesomeness reflected without any of the internal mental battle and outcome. I think if you're going to use Socrates - you should do another reading of that, or else you may as well just put in a generic person dying from hemlock poisoning.

Formatting
For me, the formatting of not using any capitalization and little punctuation was a little off-putting because it didn't seem to add anything except make your poem feel small and less formal. In the case of the very first line, not capitalizing "bc" is really distracting. I understand why someone might not capitalize the word "i" or "socrates" to show a lack of identity or an emphasis on the pain of that identity - but what is the purpose of not capitalizing "B.C."? The three stanzas seemed fitting though and I like the concept of beginning with a historical moment and then bringing it to a personal reflection.

Content
I think your strongest stanza is the second one and has a lot of interesting deep reflections in that one, the last line of the third stanza could have had even more punch. I read the poem and thought, hmm interesting parallells and colorful descriptions but I was a bit lost on "what does this all really mean?". You could be clearer with that in your poem, in my opinion, although maybe I'm just not picking up on it.

The strong point of this piece, I believe is your colorful word choice that really paints a unique and powerful description of death and the decaying of bodies - that I must commend you on.

Good luck with your further revisions and writing!

~alliyah

Hello! herbgirl here for a review!
I liked this poem, I think mainly because you communicated clearly a feeling which I, and many others, I believe, can share. Your comparison of yourself to Socrates was very interesting, and the way you described both scenarios was thorough yet easy to read. Overall, very nice.
There was one thing that I questioned. In the first stanza, and a little more throughout the poem, you describe Socrates' death. Now, I've only done this briefly, but I was glancing through some facts about Socrates' death and hemlock poisoning, and I'm not they entirely match your description. Where in your first paragraph you describe Socrates' death, you seem to be sticking to the textbook symptoms of hemlock poisoning, imagining how that would effect Socrates. However, when I looked at Plato's description of Socrates' death, it seemed rather different. Plato describes a quiet death, where Socrates' body just slowly goes numb, until the numbness reaches his heart and he dies. I can understand how this may not be historically accurate, but I just wanted to point out that there seem to be two different accounts of this story. I like how you tell it, it seems more realistic, but some might say it's not historically accurate. I don't know. Look into it if you haven't already.
Ok, now for grammatical stuff. I noticed only one spelling error, which was the last word in the second line, you left the "g" off "pulsing".
One other thing I wanted to point out that you may have done intentionally is that some of your line breaks were a bit awkward. For example, "... he tilts back his/head..." As you probably know, line breaks cause the reader to pause. I feel like this was an awkward place for a pause. There were a few other places where this applied, too, so if you feel the need to adjust, I would suggest reading through your poem again looking for weird line breaks.
Anyways, good job! I liked this poem, you did a very good job with it. I look forward to reading other things from you.
herbgirl