I Went into the Maverick Bar

by Gary Snyder
page 365-366

I was drawn to this poem because of the peculiar way that the lines are broken. It seems like there is no clear pattern in the way the lines are broken; some lines are at a medium length, some lines remain long, others are broken in the middle of a line or thought. For the lines that are broken against the sentence or thought, some have the following lines start at the very left of the page but some start somewhere else. One thing that is cohesive is that if a line does not start all the way to the left, the line will start a little bit to the right of the center of the page. Most of these lines that are separated are just extra descriptions of what the above line was talking about i.e. "backed with beer" or "by the pool tables", and although the writer may want to put more emphasis on these phrases, none really made too much difference in the imagery that was being created. However, one line that is separated by itself is "America - your stupidity", which is much more different that the other lines that begin in the middle of the page. This line was preceded by a hyphen on the previous line, which is a change in the continuity, compared to the other indented lines. This causes the reader to pause a little longer at "America - your stupidity". This line is obvious a point of emphasis in the poem. All of the other indented lines were continuous from the previous line, making the the poem flow fairly easily despite the line breaks. Another thing I liked about this poem is how the imagery appealed to all the senses. For example, a "country-and-western band" playing in the background to let the reader hear the scene, and drinking "double shots of bourbon" to appeal to taste and also smell in some way. This gives the reader a better all around feel of the bar that the writer is trying to describe.