Double Lives

Hey Emily,
I really liked this piece! I thought it was really interesting stylistically the way you used "the family...she...her mother" and would then describe each person or entity in the following lines. I think that really grabs the reader's attention and also helps them to focus on the descriptive lines because of that break. I also really liked the parallel between your family's everyday lives and their lives as farmers. I think it's really cool to think about how everyone you see might be something (or someone) else at home. It made me think a little bit about if I have any kind of double life, or my roommates, or my parents--are they different people at work or school than they are at home? I think it was great that your piece got me thinking.
Some advice that I would offer is that I think there are two threads running through your poem, and I was a little confused about which one you really wanted the work to be about. Throughout the poem it seemed that you were writing about your family--about how you all work on this farm together, and then you go and lead these double lives during the day, and then you come back together to be farmers and family again at night. At the end, you bring in the plight of small farmers and how difficult it might be to get by. I wasn't sure whether you wanted the focus to be about your family, or about the struggle that small farmers face today. I think it's also possible to make the work about both as well. You could try integrating the idea of the difficulty of owning a small farm into the beginning of the poem as well; that might make it easier to distinguish both themes if the beginning and the end come together. I would play around with it and see how adding or taking away certain lines or verses could make the work encompass both themes a little bit more. And if you decide you like it the way it is, that's great! It's YOURS, so you should always have the last word.
Best,
Tressie
UVM Mentor