Poem for Haruko

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

June Jordan’s “Poem for Haruko” is composed of 29 lines of unrhymed free verse, organized in three stanzas of nine lines of varying length and one final couplet (a stanza consisting of two lines). While there is no formal pattern of rhyme and meter in the love poem, elements of prosody—or patterns of rhythm and sound—add significantly to the music of the poem.

The use of dactyls, or poetic feet that follow a pattern of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, lend what is known as a descending or falling rhythm to certain lines. For example, the word “hap-pi-ness” (Line 2) follows a dactylic pattern, starting strong on the first syllable and following up with two softer, or unstressed, syllables. Another example of the use of dactyls and falling rhythm occurs with “lu-mi- nous, like par-ti-cles” (Line 8).

While most poems written in free verse will employ a variety of rhythmic elements, falling rhythms in “Poem for Haruko” underscore the elegiac mood associated with regret.

Repetition

The obvious repetition in “Poem for Haruko” is in the line, “now I do” (Line 10), repeated a total of three times in the poem. It enters the poem at the beginning of the second stanza and returns like an incantation at the start of the third stanza and at the very end of the poem. On the first occasion, the line lands like the other shoe dropping—the speaker has already set the reader up for a shift with “I never thought I’d keep a record” (Line 1), a phrase that all but promises an about-face. The weight of the shift grows heavier when the speaker is not only retrieving pleasant memories, but reliving difficult ones, including the memory that is the most painful and, ultimately the most consequential for the speaker.

The third repetition of the phrase “now I do” (Line 29) occurs on the second line of the final couplet—it comprises the very last line of the poem. The speaker is a different person from the lover who thought never to “keep a record of [her] pain / or happiness” (Lines 1-2); whether she is wiser for her loss, she is far more reflective.

Enjambment

Enjambment is a poetic practice in which a phrase continues from one line or stanza in a poem to the next. Enjambment is a way to break the line of a poem or interrupt the grammatical progression of a phrase to create surprise and/or multiple meanings from one line to the following line. Jordan uses enjambment throughout “Poem for Haruko.” From the first line to the second, the reader is encouraged to pause and linger for just a moment on the word “pain” (Line 1) before proceeding to “or happiness” (Line 2). Later, “your hair/ a shower” (Line 5)—an interesting but earthly and accessible image—explodes into “organized by God” (Line 6).

Enjambment provides a precipice from which the reader first steps and then falls from the repeated phrase “now I do” (Line 10). The reader steps from the first iteration to “retrieve an afternoon of apricots” (Line 11) and then topples from the second repetition to “relive an evening of retreat” (Line 20). Enjambment from the penultimate line to the last lays the reader flat: “Alone and longing for you / now I do” (Lines 28-29).