I’ve been in a writing funk since the beginning of this summer and a reading drought since the beginning of the month. This is partially due to my worrying about the future (the full-time job search is very draining) and also due to my inability to really sit down and focus and feel. I try to read or write, and maybe a feeling of inspiration will lance through me for a fleeting second, but I haven’t given myself the time to sit down and decipher exactly what the text means or analyze the precise contents of my feelings.

I’m hoping to change that.

I don’t know where inspiration comes from, but they say the more you read, the better you can get at writing. I’m challenging myself to read a poem closely, to decipher its meaning, its form, and all the elements that have elicited an emotional reaction from me. If all goes well, this will be a weekly thing. A poem or paragraph a week. Maybe that can jump start my creative juices.

In addition, I’m going to be giving myself some “rules” or elements (3-5) that can possibly be incorporated into a future poem inspired by the one I am analyzing. Maybe, if these inspired poems are deserving, they’ll pop up on this blog, too.

Most of the poems I will be selecting will probably come from the Academy of American Poets “Poem-A-Day,” which I have been subscribed to for the past several years. I recommend. Who doesn’t want to start off their day with a poem?

I will be starting with Jake Skeets Buffalograss, which was featured on September 12.

There are a couple things that strike me about this poem. First, is the form. Even before a word is read, the look of a poem on a page can create an emotional response or cause the reader to read the poem differently. For example, a reader will expect a different sort of movement if the poem is broken into couplets (as this poem is) versus one giant wall of text versus lines scattered with different alignments. One might expect a couplet to be balanced, with a methodical rhythm or rhyme scheme. However, this is not the case in Skeets’s poem. Instead the enjambment creates a sense of arrhythmia and tension in this nature-intensive scene.

The poem moves quickly from a domestic scene “Barely-morning pink curtains/ drape an open window” and immediately move outwards into the world. This already causes the poem to have a disorienting effect, to move from one side of the curtain to the other without a pause or stanza break. Outside, the “Roaches scatter,// the letter t vibrating in cottonwoods.”

I love the word vibrating there. It’s a strong and unusual verb in this context, and it gives the sense of something impermanent, as this elusive t will at some point stop moving and only the viewer’s memory will tell him that there is something in the grass.

The next couplet also uses strong tactile verbs: I siphon doubt from his throat/ for the buffalograss. Doubt becomes this tangible object that the speaker gets to handle intimately, ultimately deciding what becomes of it. This is a stanza of action, and it is made stronger by the full stop after the period. No enjambment here.

One of my favorite parts of this poem are the lines “His tongue a mosquito whispering/ its name a hymn on mesquite,// my cheek.” I love how this finite moment is stretched into something longer by bleeding into the next stanza. It’s also worth noting the sonic play of mesquite// my cheek. Again, this division creates an imbalance, as if part of the thought has spilled over to the next line. The animation of the tongue into a mosquito is also lovely, and the attention to the mosquito’s whispering makes the reader even more aware of the upcoming sound play.

Overall, this is a poem about desire. The urge to be together is natural, primal, but also desperate and consuming. The seeing and being with another is almost warlike. Everything that they are and say can collapse back to the earth.

Rules for a poem

1. Take a scene from nature (the backyard, the Grand Canyon, the sunset over the ocean) and use this as a language pool for verbs and sounds to enhance the setting.
2. Use an imbalanced couplet form. Figure out where line breaks can create the most tension.
3. Move the poem from a smaller, enclosed space to someplace much more open.
4. Play with space (3) and time. Speed up slow moments or slow down fast moments.
5. Personify one part of the scene.