In her collection of poems Last Psalm at Sea Level, Meg Day explores different form to treat different subjects and their limits. In the poem “On the Day That He Goes, I Will”, she dedicates the poem to Avery and we can imagine that this is one of her loved ones. The first surprise is at the very beginning with the lack of a capital letter to start the poem. Indeed, it makes us feel that something is missing and that we arrive in the middle of something that we don’t know. The presence of the point at the end of the first short sentence emphasizes this feeling and also creates an interesting rhythm that is fragmented. But what is most striking to me, is the fact that we actually don’t know how to read the poem. Or, to be more precise, we have at least three different ways to read it: considering that there are two different stanzas, the one on the left and the one on the right and reading them one after another; Reading by lines without paying attention to the space left on the page between the left and the right sections; Or, reading the two sections one after another but starting with the left one first.
These three different ways to read the poem are interesting because it doesn’t really change the content of it and we still comprehend it but it changes the chronological order of it. If we start by reading the left section and then the right one as a following, we feel that the first stanza is addressed to a person, probably Avery, and that the second section is a response to the first one and is an introspective reflection that the speaker has. If we read by lines without paying attention to the two sections, it feels like every line of the right side answers or gives more information about the left side and it is really interesting. It gives the impression that the poem could be one or the other and feel complete too but that the right section/stanza is more developed when the first one feels concise.
Overall, the form and how the author plays with it in this poem shows a variety of possible ways to read a poem without taking away the meaning of it and the intention which pushes the limits of the form pretty far and is inspiring as it feels like a unity.