Wade in the Water

The poem is one stanza constructed in free verse, 35 short lines, each line with two-four accented syllables. Many of these short lines use enjambment (ending a poetic line without punctuation) to disrupt the narrative and its series of clear imagery. For example, when the speaker discusses how the enslaved were forced into chains, she states,

I love you in the rusted iron

Chains someone was made

To drag, until love let them be

Unclasped and left empty

In the center of the ring (Lines 15-19).

This breaking of lines to fit the confines of the poem give powerful emphasis to the word “Chains” (Line 16), an accented syllable separated from its modifiers and beginning a new line. Enjambment creates multiple interpretations as Line 16 reads “Chains someone was made,” suggesting that chains “made” an enslaved person (“someone”), until one reads the next line, which completes the meaning: “someone was made / To drag” (Lines 16-17), showing that someone wasn’t “made” but “made to drag,” forced into a verb and not a noun.

This continues throughout the poem, giving powerful emphasis to words disrupted from the normal flow of the sentence and placed on the next line. “Love let them be / Unclasped” puts power on the “Unclasped” while also giving a unity to “Love let them be” (Lines 17-18). The alliteration created by repeating the “l” sound (Love let) creates a soft, lulling sound as opposed to a harsher sibilance from the “s” sound in the word “Unclasped.” Free verse still has a powerful poetic structure despite its lack of a strict rhyme and rhythm scheme.

The use of the “O’s” at the end of the poem creates even harsher breaks in the text, adding caesuras, or pauses, mid-way through the line. These breaks focus a spotlight on the images of escape:

O Woods—O Dogs—

O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—

O Miraculous Many Gone

—O Lord—O Lord—O Lord (Lines 31-34).

When Smith reads her poem, she reads these images very slowly, allowing the caesuras and dashes to do their work in slowing down the narrative, so that each image has our full attention as the “Girl” does her best to escape.