When I am not the subject 2

A poet, for whom I have much respect as poet and person, on reading a recently finished manuscript counseled me to reconsider my use of “I” in the poems. No specific poems were pointed to simply the observation that I could create stronger poems in that way. The poet noted that often the I is understood and thus unneeded and at other times it is distracting.

 I recently attended a poetry reading and was struck by how often we as poets use I in our poems when we are not the issue. In some of the poems it worked, Mahnaz Badidian, an exiled Iranian poet and painter, for example, acknowledging her despair at the way her home country was captured used I very effectively because when she said “I despair” she became not only herself and her country, but also other people who had despair about the atrocities of power inseparable from corruption and fear in their own countries. On the other hand, the use of I in poems in Back Lives Matter poems for example, especially when the writers had limitations to how they experienced the pain of the need for that assertion because the lives of their family or themselves were not threatened in that way, made the poems seem more self-serving. I am not one of those bad ones who does not understand your plight; I am a good one who wants justice for all, was the subtext, instead of the seemingly alternate intention of the poems to reveal the need for that position.

I have spent years teaching composition classes telling students that they don’t need put “I think” in their essays. Since they wrote the essay the reader will assume that is what the author thinks.  That same idea, I now realize should also be a part of poetry.

For example in for Jaquan I open the poem with I:

i saw you growing

from round-cheeked baby

to shiny-eyed school boy

to street-wise teen

When I remove the opening I, the poem opens with an active voice and all attention on the subject of the poem

you grew from

round-cheeked baby

to shiny-eyed school boy

to street-wise teen

or from usa fire alarm instead of ending the poem:

the house is burning

and we are inside

i have a bucket of water at my feet

where should I throw it

removing the “I” becomes

the house is burning

and we are inside

there is a bucket of water at my feet

where should I throw it

Again, I am reducing the use of I to keep the reader’s ear on the subject, the house on fire and not on me.

These are small changes, but the editing of a poem is a fine sanding to smooth out little nicks and imperfections. I am not suggesting that “I” not be used in poems, rather that each I should be examined in terms of its purpose and intent. The removing of the self as the primary driver of poems can remove much of the ego of the poem and turn it from a reflection on the poet’s feelings to a poem where there is more room for the reader to examine her/his own feelings and see more clearly what the poet is trying to reveal. At least that’s what I think.