What Sparks Poetry is a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In Language as Form, poets write about poetic language as patterned language—how words as sound, voice, sentence, and song become elements of form. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem and an excerpt from the essay.
             eenie meenie minie moe
             catch a voter by her toe
             if she hollers then you know
            got yourself a real jane crow

                           ~~~

one vote is an opinion
with a quiet legal force ::
a barely audible beep
in the local traffic, & just
a plashless drop of mercury
in the national thermometer.
but a collectivity of votes
/ a flock of votes, a pride of votes,
a murder of votes / can really
make some noise.

                           ~~~
                             
                            one vote begets another
                            if you make a habit of it.
                    my mother started taking me
                       to the polls with her when i
                         was seven :: small, thrilled
                            to step in the booth, pull
                        the drab curtain hush-shut
                         behind us, & flip the levers
                   beside each name she pointed
                        to, the Xs clicking into view.
                          there, she called the shots. 

                           ~~~

                rich gal, poor gal
                 hired girl, thief
                teacher, journalist
                  vote your grief

                           ~~~

one vote's as good as another 
:: still, in 1913, illinois's gentle
suffragists, hearing southern
women would resent spotting
mrs. ida b. wells-barnett amidst
white marchers, gently kicked
their sister to the curb. but when
the march kicked off, ida got
right into formation, as planned.
the tribune's photo showed
her present & accounted for.

                           ~~~

                      one vote can be hard to keep
                          an eye on :: but several / a
                      colony of votes / can't scuttle
                      away unnoticed so easily. my
                       mother, veteran registrar for
                          our majority black election
                           district, once found—after
                          much searching—two bags
                       of ballots / a litter of votes /
                        stuffed in a janitorial closet.

                           ~~~

                   one-mississippi
                  two-mississippis

                           ~~~

one vote was all fannie lou
hamer wanted. in 1962, when
her constitutional right was
over forty years old, she tried
to register. all she got for her
trouble was literacy tested, poll
taxed, fired, evicted, & shot
at. a year of grassroots activism
nearly planted her mississippi
freedom democratic party
in the national convention.

                           ~~~

                            one vote per eligible voter
                     was all stacey abrams needed.
                          she nearly won the georgia
                 governor's race in 2018 :: lost by
             50,000 / an unkindness of votes /
                   to the man whose job was purg
                          maintaining the voter rolls.
                    days later, she rolled out plans
                       for getting voters a fair fight.
                 it's been two years—& counting.
from the book SUDDENLY WE / Wesleyan University Press
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Cover image of Evie Shockley's book, Suddenly We
What Sparks Poetry:
Evie Shockley on Language as Form

"I found this truism (which seems to readily reproduce itself: 'one sin begets another,' 'one tragedy begets another,' 'one wedding begets another') bubbling up in my brain. If only one vote begat another in that inevitable way, I sighed, thinking of how hard it was to get women’s right to vote established as the law of the land—and of how long it was after that before Black women were able to exercise their 'women’s rights.'"
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Cover image of Katie Farris' book, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive
Katie Farris' Standing in the Forest of Being Alive

"While cancer is often described as an individual phenomenon, Farris writes of her cancer care as fundamentally relational. In a poem early in the book, she describes how, in solidarity with her first cycle of chemotherapy, 'our cat leaves her whiskers on / the hardwood floor.' Throughout her poems, treatment is depicted as not only affecting the body connected to the IV. One’s partner, one’s cat, and one’s environment, too, are touched by chemotherapy, surgery, and broader bodily change."

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