It is waking, but unable to see.
Staying awake to see too much more.
In this white desert traveling is me
Do I try to escape or find its core
But how to continue, chained to the ground
My spirit weakens in exhaust of heat
Try to walk, try to talk, there is no sound.
Anchored but floating is there no way to cheat?
Still, there is the honesty of my will
To tear one’s connections from the earth
Ascend over these barreling dunes of burning sand
for the next step taken will not ache so
embrace the heat the longing the craving
the breath of warm air that reminds you of your very heartbeat
and that though this place is vast and desolate, you are infinite—
For my creative project, I based my poem’s outline and theme on Claude Mckay’s “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker.” Mckay’s poems in his collection Harlem Shadows all hold significant personal value to him as it discusses his race, his home, his love, his hate—all things which make of himself and the world. That stood out to me amongst the other poets, so I wanted to create my own imitation and as so decided this poem would have to mean something personal to me as well. My poem, “Sand Dunes Rolling,” reflects upon the state of the mind and how one copes with it’s many barriers.
Originally, I meant for my poem to be a sonnet through and through since both Mckay’s poems are sonnets. However, I decided to break from that rigid form once I wrote the volta on line nine, because like Mckay’s poem (or the way I analyzed it), the formal structure of the sonnet carries a deeper meaning; while Mckay’s format is meant to reflect the social limitations on the outcast man and worker, my sonnet stands in for the many obstacles which bar someone from finding their potential such as illnesses or trauma or even something as simple as procrastination.
This restriction is reflected in how the poem is condensed to be a sonnet of only ten syllables, an ABAB rhyme scheme, a volta, ending at fourteen lines. As all problems start small, we are faced with a wall that halts us from continuing. I present this through the initial sonnet structure but also in the setting of the poem itself—the desert. The speaker is “chained to the ground” (line 5) and too weak to move forward, whether that forward be the core (akin to finding the reason one isn’t able to progress in life) or the exit (avoiding the problem).
However, where Mckay keeps to the sonnet structure throughout both poems from beginning to end, I break after the volta, which is the speaker’s realization that they are able to overcome whatever hurdle they face (literally, the desert and it’s “barreling dunes” on line 11 in this case). The tone shifts from solemn and weary to hopefully and optimistic. Though, no mental problem is easily handled in an instant. It takes time and effort which is why the line after the volta still hangs onto the ten syllable limitation and even attempts to rhyme a few times (though not in the ABAB style).
Eventually though, as the poem progresses, it transforms into free verse. The punctuation vanishes, which I intended to make the end feel less rigid and more smooth as though this speaker had began to walk (also reflected in the longer lines pushed forward). The lines go past the fourteen-line limit to signify the breaking of those restraints that had held the speaker down and the dash at the very end is meant to signify the infinite, that though the dunes of sand may never end, they will simply roll at one’s feet than barrel over them.
Caitlyn Klemm
Introduction to Poetry 