Kathy's+Explication

“The Poet, Trying to Surprise God”: A Demonstration of God’s Power through Humor

In the poem “The Poet, Trying to Surprise God,” Peter Meinke uses humor to illustrate that God knows everything that has happened and everything that

will happen. Through Meinke’s use of dialogue, metaphors, and allusions, he successfully expresses God’s all-knowingness and power.

“The Poet, Trying to Surprise God” focuses on a conversation between a poet and God. In an attempt to surprise God, the poet tries composing creative

new poems. God, however, isn’t surprised, explaining that He has seen everything since the beginning of time. Discouraged, the poet returns to writing his

plain and simple sonnets.

The poem’s rhyme scheme follows the Petrarchan rhyme scene: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. This shows that the poet within the poem is trying to be creative

by emulating Shakespeare, whose sonnets follow the Petrarchan rhyme scheme. Shakespeare, after all, was one of the most creative literary geniuses of

all time.

For the first four lines of the poem, the tone is quite poetic and lyrical. For example, Meinke writes:

[The poet] composed new forms from secret harmonies, tore from his fiery vision galaxies of unrelated shapes, both even and odd (lines 2-4).

The melodious quality of these lines conveys the poet's efforts to be imaginative and try to surpass God in creativity. The “secret harmonies” and “fiery

vision galaxies of unrelated shapes” are both metaphors for the poet’s creative ideas and brainstorms.

Then in lines 5-11, Meinke uses even more dramatic dialogue to depict God's all-knowingness. For instance, lines 6-8 read:

[God] saying, "There's no surprising One who sees the acorn, root, and branch of centuries; I swallow all things up, like Aaron's rod.

Here, God explains that He can't be surprised because He can see centuries ahead into the future. God further states that He can easily take away the

power of Aaron’s rod, a staff carried by Aaron, Moses’s brother. These dramatic claims illustrate God's absolute power.