17 pages • 34-minute read
This Is a Photograph of Me
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“This is a Photograph of Me,” a lyric poem with narrative elements, uses an open form. The stanzas and the meter are uneven, with each line differing in the amount of syllables.
The poem uses internal rhyme—that is, placed in the middle of lines. The rhymes are typically slant rhymes—words that have several rhyming sounds in common, but do not fully rhyme, such as “in the left-hand corner / a thing like a branch” (Lines 7-8), or, “The photograph was taken / the day after I drowned. // I am in the lake” (Lines 15-17).
The poem relies on enjambment (a line moving right into the next without a grammatical or punctuated pause) to build emotional momentum. Another prominent organizational technique is the volta, or a dramatic turn of ideas that is typically used in highly formal poetic forms like the sonnet. Here, a discussion of a seemingly bucolic landscape photograph is undercut by a parenthetical aside that reveals a drowned body “just under the surface” (Line 18) of a lake. This gives the poem circularity, in keeping with the theme of the collection it appears in, The Circle Game. Upon realizing that the speaker is dead, the reader returns to the beginning to look for clues about what happened in the speaker’s rendering of the landscape.
Lineation
Poets use the arrangement and breaking of lines, or lineation, to emphasize words before continuing on with the full sentence or thought. This can be seen in the shortest lines of “This is a Photograph of Me.” “Smeared” (Line 3) calls attention to the unclear quality of the photograph and also implies that the speaker encountered something messy (perhaps, the drowning incident). “Eventually” (Line 25) emphasizes that a determined viewer will be able to see the speaker’s body and suggests a sense of finality that the victim of the drowning will be ultimately recognized.
Other line breaks add to the emotional effect of fragmentation. Ending on words like “flecks” (Line 4), “part of a tree” (Line 8), “emerging” (Line 9), and “halfway up” (Line 10), adds to the fractured nature of the photograph. The image does not hold together, indicating a need for additional information. The speaker’s desire to be seen is highlighted in the end words “center” (Line 17), “surface” (Line 18), and “water” (Line 22) to give their location. They desperately want the viewer to see “where” (Line 19) they are and to “say” (Line 21) so, proving that “I am” (Line 21). If the drowning has annihilated the speaker’s identity, the speaker hopes the viewer will reveal them once more.
Structure
A key feature of “This is a Photograph of Me” is the reserved, organized structure that belies the chaotic surprise at the center. As Cruz puts it in The Atlantic, “The seemingly straightforward title doesn’t hint at the haunting direction the poem will take” (Cruz, Lenika. “The Subtle Horror of Margaret Atwood’s ‘This Is a Photograph of Me.’” The Atlantic, 2017). Yet, the structure of the poem mimics the title: The photograph is shown first, and the story of “me” from the title follows. The initial stanzas of the poem seem to be simple description of a landscape in a black and white photograph. However, as we formulate this photograph’s composition in our minds, we completely forget about the “me” lingering from the title—just as the speaker was erased by the lake. The speaker informs us of this in an aside that generates dramatic shock from its calm delivery: “I am in the lake” (Line 17) reverberates, sending ripples over our carefully rendered imagining. The surprise information shakes up our expectations and we are jolted into paying attention, wondering what happened and why. The choice to reveal the information in this way makes the poem interactive, forcing us to reexamine the poem for evidence. We revisit the first three stanzas, looking for clues. If the crucial tragedy were revealed in the opening, the poem would not have its eerie quality or drive us to acknowledge the unseen people in our lives.
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