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How did the writer of “A Blur” make his words seem―and sound―like poetry?

You can tell that a poem is a poem, and not an essay or a short story, simply by noticing how it looks. That’s because poems don’t follow the same rules as prose. For example, most poems are narrower―their lines don’t go all the way to the right side of the page. Instead, each line is “broken” part of the way across.

Book and feather quill pen on a wooden background.

Line breaks do more than make a poem different, though. Some line breaks also help poems mean what they mean. Notice how the writer of “A Blur” decided to break each of the lines below.

Young person wearing glasses looking at the clock on the wall in their office.

At first, I thought it might be
like watching a clock face,
smooth and metered, the way
days passed and people lived,
as if set neatly behind glass.

The first line of the poem stops with the word be, even though that’s not the end of the sentence. The poem makes you focus first on the idea of expecting something and imagining how it might happen. Then, with the next line, the poet reveals what he imagined. Dividing up the words this way puts more emphasis on the idea of expectation, since the idea is given its own line.

Question

Why did the poet put the words “days passed and people lived” on one line by itself? What is the effect on the reader?

Besides line breaks, poets use many other tools to share ideas, memories, and feelings with readers. To learn about some of these tools, try answering the questions below.

A Blur

At first, I thought it might be
like watching a clock face,
smooth and metered, the way
days passed and people lived,
as if set neatly behind glass.

But when I stepped off the bus
the blur of life overtook everything,
and I found myself crash-landing
in a series of day-long flashes,
hitting the lush, mountain grass
running, among people playing out
lives so strange to me: kids flying
into the house next door, where
shopkeepers kept the best selection
of caramelos, past la policia who
leaned against doorframes, all
half-smiles and smirks keeping a
watchful eye, the nurses bustling
in and out of the health post, their
clipboards and coolers of vaccines
for the niños, the señoras sitting
outside our municipal building,
avocados and choclos and
tomatoes and onions spread out
on thick, blue blankets, 20 cents each.

How the tidy picture I’d drawn
in my mind fell to pieces, when the
clock back opened and the gears
tumbled out, when I let go and
leaned in–to the crowd of my
neighbors and the vibrant, wild
life around me–into all the new
electricity of tomorrow.

Nate Zeff

Question

Poets often rely on the sounds of words to help a poem’s meaning. Which lines in this stanza include words that sound almost alike while creating a feeling of excitement?

Question

To help readers imagine a scene, poets may provide a list of very specific details, one after the other. These lists can get quite long―much longer than you would expect to see in prose. Which lines in the poem contain a long list of images, separated only by commas?

Question

Poems often included extended metaphors, comparisons that extend, or continue, throughout the poem. Which lines in the last stanza continue a comparison from earlier in the poem?

Question

Spanish is the official language of Peru and the language that most Peruvians speak. Why did Nate Zeff include some Spanish words in his poem?