Sounding Out Matthea HarveyTweetPosted by Kit Frick on August 26, 2010

I’ve been re-reading Matthea Harvey’s Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form, and I found myself going back (and again) to a poem in the middle of the collection, “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden.” I’ve always liked this poem, partly for the title (Harvey has a way with titles) and partly for the last line, which makes me laugh a little every time. On this read, I was thinking about the structure of the poem (specifically the lines and their breaks) and the relationship of the poem’s structure on the page to how it might be read out loud.

In “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” (and, in deed, in many of the poems in this collection), Harvey’s lines are long, often enjambed, and never punctuated. The term “enjambment,” actually, doesn’t quite do Harvey’s line break technique justice—her lines more accurately “wrap around,” which is to say that words at the beginning or ending of lines sometimes do double-work to end one phrase and begin a next. For example, “You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of / A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets.” Here, “a struggle” both concludes one thought and begins the next. In other places, the lack of punctuation within lines induces the reader to read the line as a run-on sentence. For example, “So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds / With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter.” On the page, it’s compelling.

Out loud, this craft choice has an added influence on how the poem is read. The line structure compels the reader to take one large gulp of breath at the outset and plow through as far as can be gotten until it becomes necessary to stop and gasp for air. The full-speed ahead, breathless, run-on effect of the music has a pay-off in the last line. While there is no true discernible musical break to Harvey’s groove, the poem does come to a satisfying full stop in the final line: “To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you.” Can’t argue with that.

You can read more about Matthea Harvey and find “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden” and other Harvey poems published online on the Poetry Foundation website. Give it a read out loud—and share your experience here! Any other poems that intrigue, excite, or frustrate you when read out loud? Let us know.