Tula ["Books are door shaped"]

“Tula” is one of many persona poems written by Engle. A persona poem is when the poet pretends to be another person and writes in their voice. The dramatic monologue is also used when a poet assumes a persona. A Victorian version of the dramatic monologue popularized by Robert Browning employs more formal elements from drama, specifically the soliloquy, than Engle does in her poetry.

Engle writes in free verse—unrhymed and unmetered verse—with very short lines, many of which are only one or two words long. Giving words and short phrases their own lines is common in poems written for Engle’s audience: children. Short lines are also used in spoken word poetry, and Engle’s poems are meant to be read aloud to children. The influence of spoken word poets (such as June Jordan) on Engle’s poetry adds to the performative elements of the dramatic monologue without the meter used by Shakespeare and British Victorian poets.

Short lines in poetry naturally lend to lists, or catalogues. Line breaks function as commas, are inserted before conjunctions, or separate incomplete sentences in poetic lists. The latter option—using periods before line breaks—after a single word or phrase, appears twice in “Tula”; this connects the structure of the third and fourth stanzas.