Adam Sobel Week 6 - Poetry Blog: "Haiku: U" By: Aziza Barnes

    Because this poem is a Haiku, it is much shorter than the other poems I have read by this poet. However, I consider it to be just as impactful as the rest of Aziza Barnes's work.

    The first line says "Urge unbuttons us", which I think has many purposes for this poem. For starters, it's an alliterative sentence that starts with the letter "U". I find this to be odd because "U" is not commonly found at the beginning of words and I considered it odd that Barnes would pick this letter to use alliteratively, so it immediately hooked me into the Haiku. Additionally, the sentence itself talks about motivations that push us forwards. Whenever we have the urge to challenge ourselves, we have to prepare for whatever we'll face. Often, we prepare ourselves by gearing up, a sequence commonly shown in action movies but hardly noticed in daily lives. Our urge to accomplish something and change ourselves and our passions causes us to unbutton our current outfit and prepare ourselves with a new one to journey into a new adventure. This motivational urge causes us to change not only our clothes, but what we enjoy and how we identify ourselves throughout our lives.

    The second line, "Around our sun, urgent turns," reminds me of the importance of slowing down and enjoying the present. While we are constantly pushing ourselves towards the next challenge we crave, we are forgetting that we need to remain in the moment. To me, this sentence tells us that as the Earth crawls around the sun, we tend to crawl around each turn in our journey without enjoying whatever is present in our lives. It's important to push ourselves towards an exciting future while remembering to relax and live in the moment. Nothing will stop time from passing and us from revolving around our solar system, so we need to pause every once in a while and live in the present.

    The last line, "Young ruin; round. Ours" I believe talks about our past. As we grow older, we reminisce about our younger stories and friendships that we cherish so much. But our childish sense of wonderment because ruined as time passes and the Earth goes round. However, Barnes ends on a more positive note by saying that these memories are still ours. Everything negative that clouds us, we have the power to fix or control and better ourselves to make a better future and a more enjoyable present.

    By tying all the times in our lives together, Aziza is making a statement on how we need to understand ourselves at every moment in our lives. Whether we're swimming in highs or drowning in lows, we need to remember to push ourselves forwards into the future, enjoy the positive things we have in the present, and relish in the memorable details of our past.

Aziza Barnes - Poets House

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