Strategy Essay, Week 13

In her short, two line poems, Brigitte Byrd practices a very daring and unusual form of poetry. She begins almost all of the poems the same way: "On...he/she said" and then she adds an interesting and unusual image to complete the entire poem. Because they are so short and emphasize the unusual images with italics, we personally emphasize their importance as we read, realizing as we continue through the two-line poems that Byrd is not merely writing nonsense or trying to tie together two seemingly unrelated images; rather, she is expressing thoughts on her personas lives by impressing upon us their very nature in the images they present us with.

For example, in one of these poems Byrd writes, "On finally making it to the end she said Can you see a dog jumping through a hoop of ribbons?" Though a first reading might reveal only two strange images juxtaposed together, a further dig into this particular poem reveals interesting questions. For example, the reader may decide for himself or herself what it means to say that the persona "[made] it to the end." What did she make it to the end of? Did she reading a book? Writing a book? Did just run a race? Depending on what one chooses to interpret the first section as, the part in italics can change its meaning. For example, if the persona has finished writing a book, she may be asking to find out if an idea is plausible. If she ran a race, perhaps we have a more absurdist poem in that she saw this image and is wondering if anyone else saw it as well. This, of course, raises the question as to whom she is speaking. That, again, could be anyone, and may in fact not be important to an interpretation of the poem, but is still a question one may raise, nonetheless.

All of the two-line poems present similarly interesting questions that only the reader can answer for himself or herself. In each case, one wonders what the first part of the lines refers to, to whom the persona is speaking, and what the presented image has to do with either of those. By personally interpreting each of these tiny poems, one receives not only an insight into the persona but into himself or herself depending on the scenario.