Why Go Back to School in the Second Person?
“Back to school” can be a surprisingly hard topic to write about with depth and style. But it needn’t be, if the poet employs the second person.
The glory of writing about yourself in second person is that it allows you to both detach and enter more deeply. You are set aside, even as you become more keenly alive in description. As Charlotte Donlon has noted, using the second person can create an effect in the reader of being caught off guard. Might that also apply to the poet themselves? We think it might.
Recently, we read this essay about going home to a place where the writer could not actually go home (because the home had been sold years prior). The essay has a beautiful, dreamlike quality. A touch of sorrow. But also a sense of being suspended. That’s what second person can do for you.
How to Write in Second Person
You can write about either yourself or another using second person. Just use the pronoun “You” instead of “I” or “They” or “She” or “He.” Be sure to use the matching possessive pronouns.
For example, here is how you’d change first person to second:
First Person
I stepped onto the school bus,
looking back to where my mother
was looking at her hands…
Second Person
You stepped onto the school bus,
looking back to where your mother
was looking at her hands…
Try It: Back to School Prompt
Write a poem about going back to school. Use the second person, and see where it takes you. We can’t wait to read!
Photo by Eirien, Creative Commons, via Flickr.
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Rebecca D. Martin says
The American Lit Teacher Tries Her Hand in a Creative Writing Class
It’s different this time.
You set Whitman, Dickinson,
Dunbar aside and, lonely
for literature, you bend
your mind toward younger
writers: these nine in the
desks right now. Try
a sonnet, you say. Blackout
or “Where I’m From.” Switch
the houses for objects, towns
for feelings, place for color.
Watch your history
refract before you. Now
try second person.
L.L. Barkat says
Oooo, I like this.
There’s something especially wonderful about that ending, that I can’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it’s some kind of permeability between the teacher and the students. In a very subtle and satisfying way 🙂
Bethany R. says
“Watch your history
refract before you.”
Love it, Rebecca.
Bethany R. says
Also, I love your essay, Rebecca. 🙂
Great prompt here, Tweetspeak. Thank you for once again opening up an avenue for the writing community to explore. Back to School…
Megan Wheeler says
Renaming
If my name were Scarlet I would
go by Apple. If my name were Apple
I would go by Fall. If my name were Fall
I would drive the back roads
where buses collect children
dressed for the photos of a new school year.
I would fall into a forest of Aspen
and Birch trees, disappear
into a network of belonging,
reappear in water highlighting
the color of stones in a river.
If I had the name of a river stone
I would be unbreakably lovely.
I would stand in front of glass doors
on my birthday, survive the sound a car makes
when a woman forgets about breaks
and applies the gas.
I would change my name to Sapphire
and go by blue. If I were Blue I’d be lucky
to be alive. If I were lucky I’d win a lottery
of renaming, first myself and then others.
I would rename all that is bad in this world,
starting with school shootings,
rename the shooters, so they would learn
to break, to cry, to endure, to learn.
I would rename war in simple algorithms
of tolerance and shared resource.
I would rename cruelty to animals
by eliminating cruelty.
I would rename the entire political structure
of this country so that we’re all
on one side of an ocean
listening.
I would rename the glaciers
and ice caps in place.
I would rename the earth’s
gravitational pull and I would pull
all that is good in this universe of named
of unnamed, of renamed.
L.L. Barkat says
Megan, this is lovely. So many great lines. And the whole movement of the poem.
(It would be interesting to see how the sense of it would change if it was written in the second person 🙂 )
This, especially? Oh, yes yes yes…
“so that we’re all
on one side of an ocean
listening”
Bethany R. says
Megan, thanks for sharing your poem with the community here!
I like your image of our country being “all
on one side of an ocean
listening.” (Listening is top-tier!)
Interesting too how you flow from one name and image to the next. That interconnectedness and wish to be a force for good.
Megan Wheeler says
Thank you for the kind comments. I’m sorry that I failed the assignment of writing in the third person. I wrote this poem last week from a prompt given by the editors of Two Sylvia’s Press, via the online poetry retreat, and I’m working to have the courage to share. I thought the subject fit but I didn’t consider the writing in the second person directive
Thank you again for your kindness,
Bethany R. says
We are honored you shared your poem here, Megan! Please always feel free to join us. So cool that you are working on sharing your words. That can be such a difficult thing to do; we’re rooting for you! 😀
I’m actually working on a little poem myself at the moment. Hopefully, something will materialize soon?
Raising a coffee mug to you and the other writers in our community!
Megan Wheeler says
Thank you Bethany R, very much.
I look forward to reading your poem.
L.L. Barkat says
Aw. 🙂 No worries. I think it really *would* be interesting to hear it in second person, but I loved the poem just as it was—and I echo Bethany’s comment about how the form you used (word repetition as form of connection and flow) contributes deeply to the poem’s theme. Quite nice.
Megan Wheeler says
Thank you L.L. Barkat, I will take your suggestion and work it into second person. Thank you for your positive feedback.
L.L. Barkat says
oh! just for interest sake and fun comparison. the poem works awesomely as it is. 🙂
Bethany says
Well, I’m doing a mashup response of last week’s cave prompt with this one. It turned into more of a short prose piece? Thank you for the wonderful prompts and communinty, Tweetspeak!
***
Your mom brakes at the curb with a screech, cueing you to flip down the visor for one last look and a sigh.
You step onto concrete, the black and white star patch on your shoe still immaculate.
She pulls away, her “I love you” lost in exhaust.
A taller girl glances at your red curls, then your shoes, then away.
Your thoughts swirl, swell.
Ahead, a massive clump of students thrumming outside the gym entrance. Their voices turning into a downpour of noise that grows as you step closer.
Your mom can’t see your curls’ color in her rear-view mirror anymore.
You walk inside the door, and look up at a mess of red rafters 40 feet in the air. You opt for another path, and duck inside a quiet cave entrance—
The ceiling and walls come closer. Just enough space for you to pass through easily. You feel your body heat returning to you.
Box-breathing in that mineral air and hearing your own exhales. Your star patch is out of view, but you like that. You’ve found a place without mirrors or glances — exchanged them for crystal glints and the distant sound of trickling stream.
But then, a clatter. Like someone dropping a metal lunch tray.
You throw a look behind and only catch sight of dripping flowstone.
You wait.
Memories trickle in of life up-top last school year.
You quicken your pace. Toes snag on jutting rock. You catch yourself. Hands feel for the sandpaper walls of limestone. You’re now craving a way
out.
Up ahead,
one rod of light pours down from the ceiling onto the rock floor.
A hand stretches down through it. And a warm familiar voice says your first name with a question mark.
You reach for her and start to climb, your high top’s star now grayed, but rising from one stone up to the next,
and out.
L.L. Barkat says
I LOVE this mashup approach, Bethany! And it is feeling like a prose poem. Really nice.
Reading this, it occurs to me that another great benefit of second person is how it can allow us to go “into the cave” of something—as if we are someone else, thus lending us perhaps some extra courage for the exploration. I’m going to take that with me to consider in my own writing. 🙂
The whole poem is powerful, but something about this line especially caught me:
“Your mom can’t see your curls’ color in her rear-view mirror anymore”
Bethany says
L.L, thanks for reading through all of this. (Strike “short” from my intro! lol) I’m sure I could further edit it. I so appreciate your feedback and the line that struck you. I kept going back and forth about whether or not to keep that line, as I didn’t know if it was too distracting from our main character, but felt it added some perspective. Thanks again for reading. 😀
L.L. Barkat says
Intriguing, about that almost-edited section! 🙂 It’s true that it isn’t strictly with the main character, but also that might be its power. In so doing, the line acts as a dividing line. Now the main character is really, truly alone. Or so she feels. I’m glad you left it in.
Bethany says
Yes, alone (for now). SO glad that came across to you.
I so enjoyed writing this. Thanks again for reading and letting me know your response. 🙂
Bethany R. says
I enjoyed writing that cave/back-to-school piece and thought I might try a found poem version. I suppose I could add some extra lines that weren’t there in the original and get a whole other version, but thought I’d try this first. I’m not married to the punctuation, BTW. Just thought I’d share with you. (Hoping this formats correctly here…)
***
Star, immaculate,
lost—
Thoughts swirl, swell
Downpour
Of
Noise
Inside a quiet cave,
Ceiling and walls come closer.
Just enough space for you.
Body heat returning.
A place without glances,
(exchanged them for crystal glints,
trickling stream)
Dripping flowstone memories trickle
Toes snag on jutting
rock, catch
yourself.
Craving
a
way
out
Ahead,
one rod of light on the rock floor. A hand stretches
down
A familiar voice says your first name
with a question mark
Reach for her
Climb, Star,
now grayed,
but rising
L.L. Barkat says
Love this, Bethany! What a great idea to try doing a found poem from your original. They each have their very own feel. Both wonderful. 🙂
Bethany says
Thank you for reading and letting me know your response! 😀
Megan Wheeler says
When Tramping About in a Forests of Strangers
It’s Good to be Missed by Cats and Mothers
(For Mari and Matina)
Keep in mind, as you gear up
for your first day at University,
that life is a series of spontaneous
unfoldings, a colloquium of demands,
expectations, and surprise.
By the time you graduate
you will be on to this. You will be
capable of most things: speaking
in groups of strangers and friends,
stating your opinions like a meme
of a sassy bear, shooting bullet points
from the hip, writing essays on
the importance of long dead Greeks
and other travelers, anticipating
the best items to bring on your own
excursions into forests both real
and frightening, loading dishwashers
using a finite set of mathematical theorems,
emptying the cat box of life’s messy outpourings.
All the while maintaining the joy
of reading books
with hard covers, beneath various trees,
and calling your mother
just to be reminded
how much you are loved.
L.L. Barkat says
Love the title of this poem. So fun! 🙂
My absolute favorite lines:
“loading dishwashers
using a finite set of mathematical theorems”
and, of course, the tenderness of that ending (brings back memories of many “coming of age” moments in my girls’ lives 🙂 )
Bethany R. says
What a great poem, Megan! I agree with L.L. about how fun the title is! And I love “life is a series of spontaneous/ unfoldings,” and “reading books/ with hard covers, beneath various trees.” I’m rooting for these students as they head into “forests both real/ and frightening,” and for their mom as well.
Megan Wheeler says
Thank you Bethany R. It is always so encouraging to receive such positive and attentive feedback.
Bethany says
Happy your part of the Tweetspeak community!
Megan Wheeler says
Thank you, L.L. Barkat, for your generous feedback. I appreciate it/you.