Tula ["Books are door shaped"]

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Tula” is one of many persona poems written by Engle. A persona poem is when the poet pretends to be another person and writes in their voice. The dramatic monologue is also used when a poet assumes a persona. A Victorian version of the dramatic monologue popularized by Robert Browning employs more formal elements from drama, specifically the soliloquy, than Engle does in her poetry.

Engle writes in free verse—unrhymed and unmetered verse—with very short lines, many of which are only one or two words long. Giving words and short phrases their own lines is common in poems written for Engle’s audience: children. Short lines are also used in spoken word poetry, and Engle’s poems are meant to be read aloud to children. The influence of spoken word poets (such as June Jordan) on Engle’s poetry adds to the performative elements of the dramatic monologue without the meter used by Shakespeare and British Victorian poets.

Catalogues

Short lines in poetry naturally lend to lists, or catalogues. Line breaks function as commas, are inserted before conjunctions, or separate incomplete sentences in poetic lists. The latter option—using periods before line breaks—after a single word or phrase, appears twice in “Tula”; this connects the structure of the third and fourth stanzas. Engle uses this punctuation to link the lists of book genres and supernatural creatures.

In the second and sixth stanzas, Engle includes lists of characteristics separated with conjunctions and line breaks. The list in the second stanza are qualities that Tula’s mother associates with well-read girls—like “unladylike” (Line 10)—broken up with line breaks and a conjunction (“and” in Line 11). In the sixth and final stanza, Tula counters these characteristics with the qualities her heroines demonstrate—such as “clever” (Line 49)—in a longer catalogue that uses line breaks instead of listing commas. Using hard returns instead of commas gives the list a sense of breaking with grammar rules (such as the serial—or Oxford—comma rule), showing in punctuation how Tula resists her mother’s conceptions of gender roles.

Conversational Diction

Engle uses conversational diction throughout The Lightning Dreamer. The absence of rhyme or complicated metrical devices moves the poem closer to everyday language used in conversation. This style of diction stands opposite of the heightened poetic diction that is sometimes categorized as too academic or inaccessible.

This implies a dialectic, or idea-structure composed of two opposite ideas: formal diction versus conversational diction. By using conversational diction, the poem becomes more accessible to children, as well as better fulfilling Tula’s childlike wonder at the power of books. With her background as a science professor, Engle is very familiar with how technical jargon can make text inaccessible to any but the most knowledgeable reader. The specific diction choices Engle employs in “Tula” are indicative of a mindful author writing to a specific audience, keeping their needs and abilities in mind.

Conceit

“Tula” could be considered a very loose conceit, or a poem that focuses on developing a single, extended metaphor. Strict poetic conceits compare very dissimilar things or feature “an especially elaborate metaphor,” according to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (289). Engle’s driving metaphor, the comparison between books and doors, is not surprising (given their similar shapes), but she develops this metaphor to include a mental book, crafting imagination into a “magical” (Line 41) rectangular shape. Further magic is derived when Tula “step[s] through” (Lines 40-41) the metaphorical doorway of the books and enters her imagined fantasy realms of hope, danger, and possibility for women and girls that she cannot physically view in the literal world around her. Though Engle’s conceit may not be shocking, it is quite clever and opens up a host of possibilities not otherwise conceivable without its presence.