My Response to Joyce Sutphen's Poetry

My Response to Joyce Sutphen’s Poetry

The writing style of Joyce Sutphen is very unique, at least in my somewhat narrow scope of poetry. Her broken sentence style of writing puts a lot of emphasis on both the first and second half of the sentence. This is very powerful because the reader stays focused for the whole sentence, rather than tailing off. The pause required in the middle of the sentence also forces the reader to piece together each sentence if they wish to understand the poem. This may require the reader to read certain sections several times to get the true meaning. In Sutphen’s poem “For the Record” her style proves very interesting. She writes:

            It wasn’t like that. Don’t imagine

            my father in a feed cap, chewing

            a stem of alfalfa, spitting occasionally.

The first thing you imagine (partly due to Sutphen writing “Don’t imagine”) is her father in a feed cap. The line break between “imagine” and “my father” puts the second line in its own light, giving it more importance. “My father in a feed cap” becomes a powerful image of its own. Another example of this broken sentence approach can be found in Sutphen’s “A Bird in County Clare” in the third and fourth stanzas.

            Earthbound, head bowed, his dull eye turned

            away from the house, his wings tucked roughly

            behind his back as he noticed the complete

            absence of branch and leaf which I now saw

            For the first time when I wondered what song

            he might have sung, in what bare ruined choir.

First, the split in the top stanza between “complete” and “absence” puts a lot of significance on the fact that there are no more branches or leaves. While this does not seem very important to humans, the reader now realizes the bird has lost his habitat. The second example within this poem is the mid sentence break between stanzas. Sutphen really emphasizes that this is the first time the narrator has noticed the bird has lost its habitat, and that the narrator feels strongly for the bird. Sutphen creates a powerful situation, an epiphany even, by breaking up “saw” and “For the first time,” in which the reader can experience the emotions of the narrator.

Question: What is the main purpose of breaking up sentences, as my above response, is of course, my own opinion?

*I now understand that each sentence has 9 or 10 syllables and is written in iambic pentameter, but I still do believe the way and order in which the sentences are broken up involes more significance within the poem.*