A Little Poetic Off-Roading
Let's take a peek under the hood and see what makes "The Sacred" run, shall we? Although Dunn is paying special attention to the form of his poem, he's not writing in any kind of traditional form. He's all about the free verse in this poem, so he can stop and start and swerve whenever he wants. Robert Frost, another "kind of a big deal" poet, once said that writing in free verse is like playing tennis without a net. We'll go ahead and say it's also like driving off-road while blindfolded at night time with no headlights. But although Dunn isn't using a traditional form, he isn't totally off the grid either. He does follow some parameters—they're just the parameters he set for himself (see below where we talk about the "nuts and bolts"). Take that Frost!
Why Not, It's Free, Right?
Here's another quick thought about free verse. Although Dunn doesn't use a traditional form, he must have chosen free verse for some reason, right? It's hard to say exactly why poets make certain choices, but it's clear that Dunn has used the form expertly (we'll get into that in just a sec). Free verse allows the poet to create his or her own rules, just like the student in the poem wants to find his own sacred place, listen to his own music, and move through the world on his own terms. Well, Dunn is little like that as well. He uses free verse to establish his own way of putting the poem down and it becomes his own private sacred place where he can blast his poem as loud as he wants. Check out the first stanza of the poem:
After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank (1-3)
There's no regular meter there and no rhyme scheme. In fact, the only regularity in the poem is that each stanza looks like this: three lines with the second line indented. However, checking out the freewheelin' form of this poem is like admiring the bodywork of a cool car. Remember the MTV show "Pimp My Ride"? Dunn is sort of the Xzibit of the poetry world. He's making poetry new and sparkly by breaking up lines at irregular places, indenting some lines but not others, and throwing rhyme scheme out the window as he cruises down the poetic highway.
The Nuts and Bolts
Each stanza has three lines. The second line of each stanza is indented. Normally, three-line stanzas are referred to as tercets, but tercets normally rhyme. Dunn isn't really doing the formal thing, so we won't refer to these as tercets, but—just so you know—that's the poetic tradition of where the three-line stanzas come from. There are six stanzas total, so that makes… (carry the one…) 18 lines. One of the great visual effects of this poem is that it looks like the poem is winding down the page just like someone is driving down a windy road. The indented lines create a feeling of motion, so it's like the poem itself is moving, not just the character in the poem. Vroooom! (Sorry, but you knew that was going to happen.)