Strategy Response, Week 12

Fred Chappell's poem "Janus" is perhaps a poem that epitomizes the idea of the eternal connectivity between form and function. Indeed, this poem not only comprises a very unique form but likewise does the form contribute to the overall reading and (perhaps) the reader's personal meaning of the poem. This poem is titled after the mythological Greek god Janus, who has two faces: one facing east and the other facing west. Some versions of Janus's history say that he acts as a guard for the temple at which his statue is placed, watching both ways for possible intruders. However, other versions link his double-faces with the fact that he is also the god of "open doors" and "new opportunities," meaning that his faces symbolize the extreme directions his followers make take.

Mirroring the two faces of Janus, Chappell seems to almost write his poem from the middle outward, as there is a very distinct line through the center of the poem (which is, itself, written sideways on the page perhaps because of those long lines). Upon closer inspection of that line, the reader notices that the italicized words in each line literally mirror the ones before it. For example, the emphasized words in the first line read "From east, from west" and in the second line directly underneat that read "from west, from east". The lines continue in that fashion up to the last two lines, which read "it was, it is" and "It is, it was". This distinct style of literally mirroring words reflects the duality of the god Janus and his place as central character or fixture in Chappell's poem.

Though this poem may not, perhaps, follow the distinct style of Chappell's collection Shadow Box, in which he masters the style of writing poems within poems, distinguishing them based upon their different type, the italicized words in this poem mark not an entirely new poem in and of itself but rather serve to emphasize the opposites and purposeful centering of the "double face[d]" god as the figurehead for the travelers.