The Anatomy of a Poem

I’ve always loved reading Louise Glück’s poetry, which is filled with seamless integration of imagery and emotion, often blurring the lines between poetry and prose. In fact, whenever someone is reluctant to explore, I would always recommend that they read Glück’s “A Foreshortened Journey.”

Upon first read, it’s easy to think that the poem lacks what one would traditionally associate with poetry. For instance, the line “I prepared to sleep, my head and arms on the stair above, my body crouched below,” merely summarizes the events unfolding across the narrator’s eyes.* Yet somehow, this poem was a part of Glück’s winning portfolio for the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, which begs the question: does a poem have to have beautiful diction or traditional poetic themes for it to be considered a poem? 

In the context of modern poetry, there simply are no rules defining the composition of a poem. A poetry professional fell in love with one of my sister’s friends’ poetry, which consisted of dots and dashes. To me, the piece was nothing but sprinkles of dark ink scattered upon a cosmos of words. However, the poem probably had more nuance that my untrained eyes could give it credit. The professor might have seen the mimicking of a heartbeat or the rhythm of drums through the symbols. All in all, only a reader can define what makes a poem a poem. 

The beauty of “A Foreshortened Journey” is that it illustrates how there are almost no rules or limitations to writing poetry (although it's always better to know the rules before breaking them). In this sense, poetry is quite similar to music, which is constantly adapting and evolving. Tyler Joseph, the lead vocalist of Twenty One Pilots Once Said that he hates explaining the meaning behind his lyrics because it takes away from the listener's understanding. A good poem doesn’t have to be clear, in fact, it can be purely composed of feelings or a manifestation of a moment.