Point of View

Each of the poems collected in Call Us What We Carry takes a unique approach to point of view. However, as the reader navigates the collection, she may note overlaps in the author’s formal approaches from one poem to the next. Indeed, the majority of the poems in the collection employ the first person plural point of view. One example appears in the piece “Arborescent I,” in which the speaker says, “We are / Arborescent— / What goes Unseen / Is at the very / Root of ourselves. / Distance can / Distort our deepest / Sense / Of who / We are” (7). By employing first person plural pronouns, the author is thus enacting her beliefs regarding the importance of community, collectivity, and camaraderie. All human hearts and spirits, the speaker of this poem is saying, are connected one to another. The point of view mirrors and conveys this dynamic. The same is...