The Second Person

These are just a few poems that make clever, heartrending, enigmatic, and startling uses of the second person. I am fascinated by you--the second person pronoun--because of its capaciousness and changeability. There is the you that refers just to you, the singular you; but then there's the plural you, the group of you, the masses of all of you; there's the you you that is all of us or all of them at once; there's the you that is actually a part of me. I love second person address because it seems to lay bare the communicative thrust behind all acts of poetry. To invoke you in my poem calls attention to the fact that--whether you are out there and listening or not, whether you are specific or general, living or dead, human or nonhuman--you exist, I remember you, and I am trying to reach you.