[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-149329-en":3,"doc-seo-149329-105":31,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":28,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":29,"read_time":30},149329,1099513958762,"Logic","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/1000023916a998db790?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1784791008015729253",2,"Literature","Anybody Can Write a Poem - Poem Analysis","A free-verse poem stages an argument about whether “anybody” can write, then exposes fear, shame, and the violence of literal imagery beneath everyday speech. It moves from online debate to childhood dread—getting lost in a cornfield—where panic is rendered without metaphorical rescue. The poem deepens through family memory and illness, turning a mother’s body, coded silences, and repeated “No” into an anatomy of grief. Humor and abrasion collide with tenderness, questioning language’s ability to name fear, light, and loss.","Anybody Can Write a Poem  \nI am arguing with an idiot online.  \nHe says anybody can write a poem.  \nI say some people are afraid to speak.  \nI say some people are ashamed to speak. If they said the pronoun I  \nthey would find themselves floating in the black Atlantic  \nand a woman would swim by, completely dry, in a rose chiffon shirt,  \nuntil the ashamed person says her name and the woman becomes wet and drownsand her face turns to flayed ragged pulp, white in the blackwater.  \nHe says that he’d still write  \neven if someone cut off both his hands. As ifit were the hands that make a poem, I say. I say what if someone cut out whatever brain or gut or loin or heart that lets you say hey, over here, listen, I have something to tell you all, I’m different.  \nAs an example I mention my mother who loved that I write poems  \nand am such a wonderful genius. And then I delete the comment  \nbecause my mother wanted no part of this or any  \nargument, because “Who am Ito say whatever?”  \nOnce on a grade school form I entered her job as hairwasher.  \nShe saw the form and was embarrassed and mad.“You should have put receptionist.”  \nBut she didn’t change it.  \nThe last word she ever said was No. And nowhere she is in my poem, so proud of her idiot son, who presumes to speak for a woman who wants to tell him to shut up, but can’t.  \ni ♥ Poetry  \nbut poets are assholes.  \nOnce I was lost in a cornfield. Not metaphorically.  \nIn Pennsylvania. I was four feet tall, the corn, six. A hundred feet in I lost all direction.  \nThe land was flat. No mountains to gauge, no grade to track, no box on which to climb. Featureless white sky above. So I ran.  \nThe dry corn cut me. After minutes  \nstill nothing but corn.  \nMore minutes the other way, corn still.  \nAnd another direction  \nand another.  \nPanic: all the stalks were rows of teeth in the flat open face of a mountainous worm. Not metaphorically;  \nthat is what I thought.  \nI screamed and wept and ran through the vaporous bile belching from the monster worm’s ready gut and suddenly found the road. Quiet gravel,  \ntwo miles  \nfrom my father’s boring house. So I walked back.  \nWhere’s the syntax of the ridiculous fat child? The nostalgic redemption of the nightmare made mist? There’s none.  \nFear, then shame for feeling fear.  \nStupid.  \nThe words aren’t new at all. Nor are their synonyms better.  \nPanic: A retrospective  \nLook, everybody, who got dizzy!  \nLittle Baby! Little Babysat in the street because he couldn’t stand. Little Infant Inner Ear had no balance left. His inner gyroscope failed.  \nHe was running and he fell.  \nThere was not a thing to breathe.  \nFrom what did Little Baby run? Whose fangs were athis rump? The shark beneath the kitchen floor. The tiger in the dining room. The daddy longlegs in the milk glass. Hungry animals in the home! Look at their rabies.  \nliteralness  \nThere is no real word for fear or light or rabid grief. My mother’s body lay in the pink-painted room.  \nThe outline of her skull was clear and her barely open mouth seemed small. Not  \nYour-Mother-ButHer-Body  \nsay my aunts; that is, the shell that carried her and malfunctioned and tried to fix itself and for its effort gets a gaudy steel shell ofits own, which itself is interred in a concrete shell  \nthat bears the weight of dirt and rainwater, the world insisting itself on everything in the world. It’s the least original thing in the world. For the last two days we would sit my mother up and NyQuil-green bile would pour from her mouth,  \nher irreversible body  \ntrying to expel what it could.  \nThe only things she could say were No and I Don’t Know. And babble. The bottom halves of syllables. Any flotsam  \nthe dying mind could grab because apparently there was something to say.  \nThen that stopped too and briefly I saw nothing but the pink paint and the chipped wood floors. The traffic was average outside and Baltimore was Baltimore, the perpetual 1940s light.  \nThere were several children there.“Here,” my cousin ","cbCainSLrmjnsFvk","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCainSLrmjnsFvk","pdf",97551,6,1,8,"English","en",105,"# Anybody Can Write a Poem\n## Online debate about who can speak\n## Cornfield panic and failed navigation\n## Fear, shame, and language limits\n## Illness, family memory, and relentless literalness","[{\"question\":\"What argument does the speaker have in the poem?\",\"answer\":\"The speaker argues with an online commenter who claims anybody can write a poem. The speaker counters that some people are afraid or ashamed to speak, and explores what happens when identity is forced into speech.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the poem depict the speaker’s experience in the cornfield?\",\"answer\":\"The speaker gets lost literally in a cornfield in Pennsylvania and experiences panic as the landscape becomes featureless and threatening. The dread resolves only when the road is found and the speaker walks back.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the poem treat grief and language when describing illness and death?\",\"answer\":\"The poem links fear and shame to the limits of words, emphasizing that there is “no real word” for fear or light. It also portrays the mother’s illness through repeated phrases and bodily detail, while showing that speech eventually stops.\"}]","Anybody Can Write a Poem - Poem Analysis | PDF",1787798200,12,{"code":4,"msg":32,"data":33},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":34,"title":13,"keywords":35,"description":14,"schema_data":36,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":29},"anybody-can-write-a-poem-poem-analysis","",{"@graph":37,"@context":86},[38,54,69],{"@type":39,"itemListElement":40},"BreadcrumbList",[41,45,48,51],{"item":42,"name":43,"@type":44,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":46,"name":47,"@type":44,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":44,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":44,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/anybody-can-write-a-poem-poem-analysis/149329/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":42,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-04","2026-08-27",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What argument does the speaker have in the poem?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"The speaker argues with an online commenter who claims anybody can write a poem. The speaker counters that some people are afraid or ashamed to speak, and explores what happens when identity is forced into speech.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"How does the poem depict the speaker’s experience in the cornfield?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"The speaker gets lost literally in a cornfield in Pennsylvania and experiences panic as the landscape becomes featureless and threatening. The dread resolves only when the road is found and the speaker walks back.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"How does the poem treat grief and language when describing illness and death?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"The poem links fear and shame to the limits of words, emphasizing that there is “no real word” for fear or light. It also portrays the mother’s illness through repeated phrases and bodily detail, while showing that speech eventually stops.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,98,101,105,110,114,119,123,128,131,135],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":111,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":121,"slug":122},"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":124,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":125,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":127},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":126,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":129,"show_sort_weight":126,"slug":130},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":132,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":132,"slug":134},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":138},19,"General","general"]