Per your request for critique, here are my thoughts on your poem:

i must say that this is one of the more fluid and fun spoken word pieces i've read on dA. like i've commented many times to people, rhyming poetry is hard to do right. if the cadence stalls or becomes predictable, if the rhyme scheme becomes redundant, or (especially) if the poem does not contain something extraordinary to take the reader's focus off of the mechanics of the piece and into their own imagination, then a poem can often appear to fail. yours does not fail. when i start reading this in my thoughts, my mind appears to produce an actual voice reading this aloud. it is the perfect choice for live spoken word performance, and i would love to hear it.

as i said, the success of poem like this leans heavily on compelling content, and you deliver a straight flush. your rhythm-infused litany of troubles seem to pile onto one another, just like the poem's form, with its narrow column of text. each disturbing revelation seems to wobble the structure, coinciding with a similar shakeup of imagery and feeling. so, this is another strength of the poem: its apparent synchronization of form to feeling.

one of the first things i look for when attempting to critique a poem is whether the artist appears to be on top of their message, emotionally/spiritually/poetically aligned with some steady, inner voice, and whether it seems contrived, even if technically sound. your writer's voice is well established here. you know about what you've written, and the result of it seems like effortless writing (which isn't to be confused with not appearing to have spent any time on it.) the effort seems sure-handed, and the reader suspends any and all disbelief that these words are true and meaningful and they should be allowed direct passage into the subconscious ear. so, this is one more successful trait of this poem.

at this point, i think we're down to looking for any improvements in the areas of cadence and minor mechanics, because i can't really find anything on the higher scales of vision, concept, or veracity to critique. and i really looked.

I'm gonna lay it on the table
Ring the bell
Do the tell
Get the spelling right
Tight.
Got called "depressed"
Took it up to "manic"
Bipolar in the head
And they said --

first two lines work well. they roll off the tongue, and the image of laying it on the table as an idiom for telling the whole truth begins the foundation for your straight shooting tone. Ringing the bell has many useful connotations, and brings a bit of sound into the image of beginning this process.

"Do the tell" is an OK expression, is suppose, if not a bit redundant with the preceding lines. i do consider the nature of the piece, and how you might want to layer some redundancies in a spoken word manner. so, i don't know that you need to consider improving this, but i don't know that the poem would suffer at all if this was removed.

The "Get the spelling right/Tight" line is very cool. i like the rhyme and the way the words right and tight are almost defining each other in this context. and i enjoyed how you come to a screeching halt with "Tight" on the next line. again, this works because there is some theatrics involved in how this would be performed, and i saw it in my minds eye, as well as heard how it would work. i don't think i would like it as much if i thought this would not be read aloud.

the rest of the strophe is perfect. it's like i can see each scene with doctors, therapists, whatever throwing out buzzwords and then taking it "up" to manic. that was actually quite clever in my opinion, the way there could easily be a double meaning with up as in up a notch to a more serious diagnosis, and up as in adding the dimension of mania to the low of depression. there's really not much i would change with this strophe.

"Make it longer,
Schizo-affective
Bipolar tendencies"
New dependency
On taking pills,
Through my hills
Knock out the frills,
Get double-damned.

the beginning of the next strophe is almost humorous, cementing the direction of the poem and bringing the meaning of the title into play. i'm not totally sure about "Through my hills/Knock out the frills". i sort of had to guess that this was a reference to medication intended to level out the mood swings and, thus, eradicating the chance at feeling joy. this, i guess, is the reason you're "double-damned". while it is clever and continues the colloquial diction you employ throughout the piece, it is possible that it will get lost in translation, especially in a spoken word performance where the audience doesn't really get a 2nd take (though, i wonder, might they have the text of the poem in front of them during the performance?) if i got the intent of these lines correctly, the word you might consider changing is "through", as "through my hills" is somewhat vague. i would add an action word here, something to do with razing or leveling the hills, but something that keeps with the familiar language. the ending to the strophe is pitch perfect.

'Cause a this shit --
Father dies in a pool
Mother dies loving a fool
Mother let days pass,
No food or water
How did she last?
I closed her eyes,
They felt alive,
Like little butterflies.

the revelations at the beginning of this strophe are perfectly placed and perfectly paced to provide a shocking jolt, which draws the reader father into your realm. the 3rd line is important, but it's a bit of a letdown, and the extra syllables at the end of it don't really seem to work, at least in the audible performance going on in my head. i'd consider isolating "loving a fool" on its own line, because there seems to be a natural break there. and the last three lines . . . my gosh, they are very strong - the pinnacle of the poem, in my estimation. wicked good.


Hector dies,
Left alone by
The unwise,
Young white cats
Die like that.
Stepmother dies,
Slack with cancer
She too went back.

this is a serviceable strophe. i really liked the "Young white cats/Die like that"; the flow, at this point, is approaching song-like. the only slightly negative for me was "slack" appearing at the beginning of the cancer line. it may have been unintentional, but all the rest of the /æ/ sounding words fall at the end of lines. after you switched up the location of the rhyme, i was expecting my inner orator to rhyme with "cancer" on the last line. when you revert to the line ending with /æ/, it threw me off. i'm hesitant to say it needs to be corrected, until i hear it spoken aloud. but if you don't want the rhyme to continue at the end of the slack line (by switching places with "cancer", for example), or you feel like "cancer" needs to stay at the end of this line, you might just consider picking a different word other than "slack". it's no big deal. i'm really nitpicking at this point.

And nothing stopped.
I saw them all
Saw them all day,
Figments, fragments
Called "delusions"
Earthquake, fire
Blood and flood
Not from me
Not my feed
Just these -- "things."

this strophe . . . i would change absolutely nothing. the spoken metre, the meaning being conveyed, it really needs no improvement. so, i'd like to discuss what is missing, what could be added. the first line about "nothing stopped" seems to suggest that something previously mentioned in the poem would stop . . . your condition or perhaps the misfortune of others in your life. as a reader/listener, the first thing i'm compelled to do when i think there's a reference to previously disclosed information, i start working backwards through the text/words in my head or on the paper, trying to find the right context. this can, and often does, work in poetry. especially if the contextual information is close at hand (i.e. in the immediatelly preceding or succeeding lines.) the last strophe talks about two individuals who die, so my first assumption is that what was supposed to stop but didn't was important people in your life dying on you. but the rest of the strophe quashes that assumption - you're clearly talking about your mental health, and it doesn't make sense that people dying would somehow resolve these issues. so, i ask myself, where in the poem was it indicated that the mental health issues might abate? the prior two strophes talk about all the misfortune that's happening to people in the your life. we have to move all the way back to the "Make it longer" strophe to find a possible context for an expected resolution to the issues being described - the "taking pills" reference. if this is what was supposed to make "figmants, fragments/Called "delusions"" go away, then my only criticism would be that the connection might be too far away for someone to pick up on. you might consider adding a bridge to the pill reference or move the strophe closer to this one, so that the context of the "nothing stopped" line is a bit more clear.

Small cold voices
In my ear
Hissed admonitions
None could hear.
Little people sat
And they stood
And they spun
Far too often,
And often too near.

this strophe really gave me the creepin' willies. and that's good. you give the reader undeniable images that are easily digestible, making them all the more disturbing. there is a bit of a minimalism in this strophe that, as a fellow poet, i would find myself wanting to decorate. it's by no means a criticism of this poem, and you are obviously sticking to your plain spoken-word diction that is serving you well, here. but, maybe thinking upon "cold" and just seeing if there's any other descriptor(s) out there that might bring the reader/listener a little closer to the terrifying actuality of these "voices". the last line is just a bit awkward. it might be better with one less syllable - you could delete "And", but then the lines in the strophe start to seem a little to similar - you do a good job of breaking them up throughout the poem. if it were me, i might consider rewriting it, keeping the intent of how the closeness of the hallucinations was the principally frightening aspect
, but just something that adds a bit more color than just plainly stating they're "too" near. i'd like to see something a bit more intimate. how near is "too" near? it seems like, in the following strophe, you do start to explain this. but it's almost too late for this line. i want to know right here and now what "too" near is, because of the dread that you've built up in the preceding lines kind of demands a little more detail here.

The dead white cat
Was always there
On my bed
On the chair
On my hair
That cat was everywhere.

again, pretty creepy, if not also a bit absurd towards the end. by the last line of this, i started thinking of Cat in the Hat. the low hanging fruit, as far as something to fix, would be saying "In my hair" instead of "on". but, i feel like you've sort of lost some momentum you built up in the preceding strophes. the last line makes the cat seem comical and the dread of the situation kind of evaporates. maybe you want comic relief here, but my sense is that there should be no comedy at the expense of the dread. again, if you can find a personal detail about how the cat is somewhere it should not be, being dead and non-existent and clearly targeting your sanity as it is, something that exemplifies the illness, the cycle that brings one back to "naming that baby", something that shocks us into realizing that this is really frightening stuff, then i would consider adding it.

Earth shifted
Dropped and popped.
Voices yelled "Stop"
"Go" or "Get lost"
Vision frosted
With those losses
And I got scared
When called by name,
It's a real bad game.

first four lines are pretty good - they lend well to spoken word, allowing natural accentuation to the words of the voices. I got a little lost with "Vision frosted/With those losses". it's not really clear what has frosted your vision or to what losses you're referring. i really connected with "And I got scared/When called by name,". this is a self-evident truth that still bears stating, still affects the reader, and i imagine, in a performance, could really give you a good opportunity to bring this point screeching with some theatrics. "It's a real bad game" sounds cool but it feels almost totally unnecessary. again, i temper my criticism knowing that any negative impact of superfluous adjacent lines in a spoken word piece may be negligible, or else they are actually needed to keep the performance in rhythm. but, "bad game" is underwhelming.

I said: "You be you
You're not the same
Get outta my room,
Leave my space,
You trace your
Ghosts in outline
You think it's fine --
But I don't have time."

i really love how you're addressing the apparitions at the beginning. i can feel a crescendo welling up in your defiance - it's very effective. The "you trace your" line sounds off. i'd like to see "trace" moved to the end of the line or removed to keep consistant with the established form. Also, "ghosts in outline" doesn't deserve its own line. i don't think you would naturally put emphasis on the object of the sentence here. i would consider moving the ghosts line up with the trace line and then, if needed, figure out what might could be emphasized and isolated on its own line - an example might be to drop the "in" and just put "outline" or "outlines" on its own line, much like with "Tight" in the first strophe. The "fine/time" lines and rhyme are a little weak, but i understand it's sort of like a negotiation you're having with yourself. it works, but it's a bit too succinct and simplistic for my tastes. i'd like to see more emotive language used here. again, perhaps you can make up for the lack of literal emotion with theatrical presentation.

You left then, did it right
With a sigh, disappeared
Got on out with that fear,
I could handle my career.
I got up and I moved on,
Now you (usually) stay gone.

the ending could use a few more triumphant elements in it. i mean, having defeated all these demons and recovering from all this misfortune, you make it seem a bit anti-climatic here, which also seems to betray the crescendo that i felt you were building in the preceding strophe. and also, i would like to see another reference to the title. i really enjoyed the beginning where you seemed to be lamenting the professionals' attempts at naming your ailment, and thus, helping you to understand your predicament. i was expected, hoping to find some closure with this process, and that you would name the baby, or that you would get a strangle hold on your demon and pull it out for the reader to get a good look at. it feels like there are possibly some missing lines in between the last two strophes. i guess you are saying that by addressing the demons and telling them to get lost, that's when they left "with a sigh". but was it really as simple as that? and how does that tie in with all the extraneous misfortune that you wrote about? all the sickness and death and bad choices that befell those close to you don't really get a reading here at the end of the poem - they appear like stranded chapters in your narration. closing the gap between those elements, the title, and your semi-happy close would obviously take a bit of doing. i still think the poem is strong without this, but it could be made much better, with a deeper line from start to finish, and thus, a better report with the reader.

all in all, a good poem, and it is already in my favs. i hope some of this helps a little.

Readers! These few opening remarks are very important in considering a critique of this work in the light of the genre it represents.

Urban/Spoken Word are forms that have roots expressed in works by many ‘blues’ writers and later what has become known as ‘rap’. This body of literature seeks to illuminate the human condition of those struggling to find meaning in dehumanizing environments; particularly those incubated in ‘urban’ settings.

The dialogue in ‘Name That Baby’ is classic in this sense telling a compelling story that develops through the problem associated with diagnosing a mental illness, some causative background, tension, and ultimately an uneasy resolution.

Urban/Spoken Word represents work that by its nature is meant to be read aloud; ‘performed’ would be even a better description. Some of the ‘irregularities’ discussed in this critique could very well be alleviated by the methodology of the reader/performer. Some of these techniques I will discuss in this critique.

Meter and rhythm is VERY important in this type work. I will discuss the elements of these by indicating a ‘hard’ accent in bold and a ‘soft’ accent in italic - Thusly when using words, and with an ‘ and ~ for hard and soft accents respectively when discussing rhythm patterns alone.

As in:
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane

Please note that some accents gain strength ‘positionally’ in association with softer accents; in this case the ‘on’ gains strength positioned between the softer ‘ly’ and ‘the’.

At the outset Name That Baby is presented in a strong staccato rhythm. For example, the first strophe’s initial lines could be rendered thus:
~ ~~ * ~ ~ ~ *~
~ ~ *
~ ~ *
~ ~ * ~ ~
*
A performer could very well, in combining ‘gonna’, ‘on the’ and ‘do the’ each into a single beat gain a result from the first 21 words a very staccato eighteen-beat accent pattern;
~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~* (the effect sharp and compelling).

A complementary rhythm could be sustained a while longer by removing the ‘to’ in line ten thus leaving; ~~ ~~ * ~ ~~ ~~ * ~ Followed by the empathetic ‘They Said’.

While the rhythm lags a bit in spots as the dialogue develops, it is repeated in varying degrees throughout the piece. I believe the rhythm could be strengthened considerably by removing some unnecessary wording. Let’s take the second strophe for example.

They made it longer
Many syllables to ponder
“Schizo-affective,” they said
“With bipolar tendencies.”
Sounded like dependency

The closing four lines of this strophe having end-rhymes that beg to be shouted and culminating with another empathetic closing line could stand just nicely as written!

On taking many pills
Throughout my hills
Knock out the frills
That’s double-damed

Well, that is quite enough to see the compelling nature of the rhythmic verse imbedded into this piece. It becomes a bit harder to sustain this type of driving rhythm in spots, but as I said earlier a skilled performer could erase much of what I perceive to be liabilities in a creative audio performance. This begs to be read aloud.

Overall, an absorbing dialogue good use of space, internal and end rhyme used effectivly outweigh the difficulty of off-rhythm points in the read. Nicely done.

Ah, the stars… I’ve had a dear person critique a couple my pieces and planted and unsightly 2 ½ stars across the board which I find visually appalling. I’ll use a prettier but equally meaningless 4 stars with the caveat that no piece of this genre should be judged by a single person and certainly not without hearing it read dramatically.