Nystrom’s poetry uses run-on sentences to create a kind of breathlessness permeating the voice of the poem. At the same time there is something sustained and controlled about the rhythm in her poetry, particularly “pronghorn.” The repeated “A, E, U” and “B” sounds in the first two stanzas create a rhythm almost like a rap, in which the voice of the poem seems to be working against the breathlessness of the language of the poem. “less heat than the fields up top or the lower bluffs stretching out to the river,bleached grass bending east in wind, lifting up sometimes then bending again like the fur/ of bigger animals a hand might’ve just passed over.” The sustained, continuous quality of the poem also seems to reinforce the easy flow of imagery she creates, blending the images of landscape, the “elegant neck”, grass, animal fur, a human hand, moving water, and the shifting sandbar, all creating one seamless image.
“Pronghorn” by Debra Nystrom
Mar 28th, 2017 by finnegan17