Hello Lady Elf

I'm offering this review because you're a new member. Please remember that everybody has different tastes. This critique is the opinion of only one person and offered in the spirit of constructive criticism with a hope that it will prove useful if you decide to further develop or edit your poem.

What I liked.

Congratulations on your win in the "Love Shouldn't Hurt Poetry Contest" 

I love the powerful emotions expressed in your poem, the images you offer your reader (like the bent back arm and standing in the woods one night, and especially the elastic band stomach), and the strong rhyming structure of your poem.

What I feel may need improvement.

I tend to be rather fussy about structure and stuff, so please don't be offended by the following suggestions. You're already a winner, and I entered and didn't win, so these are just thoughts from me to you that you may or may not choose to make use of if you decide to edit this poem.

His mission alone was to destroy my life. - 'alone' in this line is ambiguous, but I think you mean that it was his main focus, so maybe change this a little to make it clearer, eg. His primary mission was to destroy my life.

He would hang himself I'd better believe. - I feel there's some punctuation missing in this because "I'd" onwards reads like a different sentence. Maybe a semicolon would work, or alternatively an emdash.

I stood in the woods on one terrible night, / To switch off my life and never see light. - if a sentence continues over two lines in a poem, and that sentence wouldn't normally have a comma at the point the line ends, it's better just to leave the line end blank rather than use a comma there in an unnatural position. You get a natural endstopping anyway just by its position without using a comma.

Fights with demons that wanted me dead. - it depends what you mean by 'demons' here, but if you mean your husband was the demon then I'd be tempted to use 'who' rather than 'that' here, but if you mean internal demons within your own psyche, then 'that' would be correct. 'That' can be used as a pronoun, but it's usually considered better to use 'who' when it's a person concerned.

Hands round my throat gasping for breath. - because the two parts of this line relate to different grammatical subjects, ie. his hands/your breath, I feel you need something between these, either punctuation or some words to separate out the two parts, imho. For example 'Hands 'round my throat as I gasped for breath'. Also note the apostrophe on 'round because you mean 'around' in this context, I suspect.

Conclusion.

An awesome poem. I offer my suggestions humbly with the knowledge that this is a really good poem as it is without any changes.

Thank you for sharing your poem with me. Since you're a new member of this community, please check out "Invalid Item" We want to award the best new authors on this site, so please enter either a poem or a short story. Read the rules before posting an entry.

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1873271 by Not Available.

Best wishes,

Bob




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