Pre- AP English

Would someone mind reading my poem?
It is about child slavery in the chocolate industry in Africa.
S>S>C>I

Dark Chocolate

Wee hands thrust into drudgery
Down the back end road from discovery
What was wages for the homeland
A guile pawned by the whip hand
Marked callous cash till deep-sixed
Whiteness by tender scars eclipsed
Gnawed piecemeal by slumbering pesticides
Infant Sisyphus with cacao stones mechanized
No wisps of enlightenment for Exodus
Ivory dome veils the smoke as nebulous
Mortal creatures in the deathless industry
Fed by putrid ambrosia in rapacity
All for Dark Chocolate

Hi I’m a huge poetry lover and have actually competed in a few poetry competitions so let me see if I can offer some advice!

Firstly while I think the general idea is fantastic you focused a bit too much on the rhyme and neglected the rhythm. When you write poetry it should have a clear beat throughout, and while it doesn’t have to be consistent (it can actually be really helpful to put emphasis on a particular line by breaking the rhythm) it does still have to follow a bit of a pattern. The easiest way to make sure you have the beat is to recite your poem and listen to see if it follows any sort of rhythm. It might just be from my personal reading but I couldn’t really detect any specific pattern of rhythm in the poem. Additionally while I appreciate that you tried to make sure it rhymed, you generally want to pick a pattern for a rhyme scheme. Except for some specific types of poetry such as free-verse, poetry is all about formulating patterns and knowing when to break from your established pattern for dramatic effect. An example of a rhyme pattern would be ABAB…, which would have line 1 rhyme with line 3 and line 2 rhyme with line 4 and so on. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that specifically but you want a pattern of rhymes throughout the poem rather than just focusing on making sure you have a set number of internal rhymes. Of course all this advice could be totally off depending on the assignment you were given (I’m assuming this is an assignment since you titled it Pre-AP English) so feel free to disregard if it’s not relevant to the assignment but I think in generally this could help improve it.

Hope that was helpful! :slight_smile:

Yup; I’m a bit worried. It is my last project, so I do not want to mess it up. I see what you mean about the rhythm. I will try to kink it a bit.
Thank you!!!

Glad I could help! Good luck I’m sure you’ll do great! :slight_smile:

Closing. HW help is not allowed.