In This Place (An American Lyric)

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“In This Place (An American Lyric)” is a free-verse poem of 13 stanzas with varying line lengths and no consistent rhyme scheme, meter, or form. Scattered rhymes do occur throughout the poem: In the second stanza features internal and end rhymes: “place” (Line 7), “grace” (Line 8), and “face” (Line 9). Rhyme is also used for emphasis, as in the very short staccato lines of Stanzas 10 and 11, which all use the same end rhyme.

The poem creates rhythm through repetition, enjambment, cadence, and strategically placed pauses. Many stanzas repeat the chant-like phrase “There’s a poem in,” building momentum. On the other hand, the eighth stanza connects the importance of truth to the ability to dream through a colon that divides a line in the middle and then creates enjambment: “a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer / or knock down a dream” (Lines 51-52).

Structure is also created by each stanza’s mini-story, tied together by the theme of creating a lyric that is uniquely American.

Simile

Gorman uses similes, comparisons utilizing the words “like” or “as,” throughout the poem, which work to bring its imagery and emotion to life. In the third stanza, a simile describes protest chants as “sheets of rain” (Line 14) that rip through the air. This comparison evokes the relentless sound of rain, making the chanting feel as inevitable and powerful as an unstoppable weather phenomenon. The image is one of strength and universality, as listeners recall the deluges they have experienced. Similes also help anchor abstract concepts: The poem compares hope to a “stubborn / ship gripping a dock” (Lines 49-50), a scene that grounds the potentially ambiguous concept of optimism in the readily available auditory, visual, and tactile image of the side of a boat abutting a dock jutting out into the water.

Repetition

Repetition is perhaps the most used literary device in the poem. The title itself often recurs in the poem, as the repeated phrase “There’s a poem in this place” (Line 1) serves to continually ground and specify the poem’s settings. In the first stanza, the phrase literally refers to the stage on which Gorman is presenting in the Library of Congress; later stanzas capitalize on the open nature of the word “place” by substituting the names of other locations for this word (as in, “There’s a poem in Charlottesville” [Line 17]).

The poem also often reuses the word “poem,” though it sometimes replaces it with the loftier sounding “lyric”—another word from the poem’s title. The term “lyric” is associated with music; lyric poetry is usually descriptive and emotional rather than narrative or dramatic. To create an “American lyric” means to write a poem that defines what this country is and what it might become in the future. The lyric aspires to be an updated “America the Beautiful”—a song that speaks to and includes a diverse 21st-century citizenry.