Deer Hit

For a period of time in the late twentieth century, the second person point of view poem gambit dominated workshops as poets fled from the egocentric confessional mode but still needed a way to deliver personal narratives. In many turn-of-the-20th Century poems, second person narratives essentially function as first person narratives.

In his 2006 essay “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment,” Tony Hoagland discusses the fashion for dissociative, experimental poetry at the beginning of the 21st century as a retreat from complicated reality and the embarrassment of the personal. Second person narratives achieve some of that desired remove while still maintaining some affiliation with the real.

In “Deer Hit,” the bad decisions, poor judgment, and reckless behavior all land on the reader, the “you.” Loomis draws the reader to a place where no control can be had, carried along in a narrative bound to cause destruction. The actions portrayed as ours reflect choices we think we’d never make, but ultimately the story does not belong to us. Loomis wants us to know what it would feel like, however, if it did.