Welcome to this month’s poetry classroom, with poet and professor Julie L. Moore. We invite you to respond to the poems we’ll share here—their forms, images, sounds, meanings, surprises—ask questions of Julie and each other, and write your own poems along the way.
Something to Amaze
There is one advantage
in not knowing everything,
in walking through fields
time and time again, still finding
something to amaze—
like these three birches
huddling together, feet
wedged in ice, snow
sifting through their arms.
And the shiver in those arms.
Their silent torsos
thick with acquiescence.
1. The poet says there is one advantage in not knowing everything, yet never states what that advantage is. In your opinion, how does this decision help or hinder the poem?
2. Note the repetition of “in” at the beginning of lines 2 & 3 and the repetition of “arms” at the end of lines 9 & 10. This is a catalog technique. What if the poet had pushed cataloging just a bit further? How might that have changed the poem?
Or, consider the visual effect of these repetitions placed and spaced the way they are; even if the poet did not do this consciously, it can have a slight effect on meaning at the subliminal level. What kind of an effect, in your opinion?
3. Do you hear the repetition of “s” sounds in the last five lines? What kind of feeling does that sound give you? How would this feeling change if, say, the poem repeated a lot of “k” sounds here instead?