Toy Boat

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form And Meter

“Toy Boat” is a free verse poem, meaning it doesn’t follow a fixed rhyme-scheme or a fixed metrical pattern. Just because the poem is free verse, however, does not mean that it is formless. To the contrary, there are two important formal features that organize “Toy Boat.”

First, while “Toy Boat” is 28 lines long, it is only 70 words for a total of 87 syllables. By comparison, a traditional double sonnet (also 28 lines long) written in iambic pentameter would have a total of 280 syllables. So, although Vuong’s poem isn’t technically a short poem in terms of the number of lines it has, the lines of “Toy Boat” are all extremely short: five lines are one word long (Lines 7, 17, 21, 22, and 24); eight lines are two words long (Lines 1, 2, 10, 13, 15, 18, 26, and 27); ten lines are three words long (Lines 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 25); and no line is more than four words long. These short lines give the poem a feeling of brevity and concision, which fits with the content. “Toy Boat” examines a minute toy—far smaller than a real boat. The short lines are suggestive of the size of the titular toy boat. Additionally, “Toy Boat” is written “For Tamir Rice,” a Black child who was killed by the police, and the speaker is considering both the titular toy boat and Rice at once (See: Poem Analysis). Rice was only 12 when he died. His life was cut extremely, tragically short, thus the lines of this poem written for Rice are cut short as well.

Second, “Toy Boat” does not use any commas, periods, question marks, or exclamation points. The poem proceeds entirely without the organization or closure of terminal punctuation. In fact, there are only four pieces of punctuation in the whole poem: two em dashes (Lines 6 and 14), an ampersand (Line 13), and a hyphen (Line 23). The lack of terminal punctuation in “Toy Boat” contributes to the lack of closure in the poem (See: Themes). The absence of a period at the end of the poem (or anywhere else) suggests that, despite writing the poem, the speaker has not found any closure following Rice’s death. It also suggests that the problem has not stopped, that more Black people will be murdered by the police.

Concision and the continuation of grief are in tension, but they do not contradict—Vuong is able to contain both in the form of “Toy Boat.”

Enjambment

In poetry, when a sentence or phrase runs over one line and onto the next without terminal punctuation, this is called enjambment. The opposite of enjambment is an end-stopped line where the line is a complete unit, doesn’t spill over onto the next line, and ends with terminal punctuation. Four lines of “Toy Boat” are heavily enjambed. Line 6 reads: “to arrive or” (Line 6). At the end of this line, the reader might reasonably ask, Or what? The answer doesn’t come until the next line: “depart” (Line 7). Line 6 is, therefore, enjambed.

Line 8 reads “no wind but” (Line 8), which raises the question, But what? The answer doesn’t come until the next line, “this waiting which” (Line 9), and this raises another question, Which does what? That question is answered on Line 10: “moves you” (Line 10). Thus, Lines 8 and 9 are also enjambed.

Line 23 is so heavily enjambed that it ends with a partial word: “as if the sp-” (Line 23). The rest of the word “sparrows” is completed on the following line: “arrows” (Line 24). Thus, Line 23 is also heavily enjambed. In addition to the poem’s short lines, these enjambed lines emphasize the abruptness with which Rice’s life was cut short.

Metaphor

While stanza six of “Toy Boat” can be read literally, it can also be read metaphorically (See: Poem Analysis). One possible interpretation of this stanza is that the titular toy boat is being compared metaphorically to a “toy leaf dropped / from a toy tree” (Lines 19-20). A metaphor is a comparison of one thing to another thing that suggests a common quality between the two. If stanza six is interpreted metaphorically, then the common quality between the “toy boat” (Line 18) and the “toy leaf dropped / from a toy tree” (Lines 19-20) is their toy-ness. Even in the metaphorical comparison where the boat looks like a leaf, it is still obvious it’s a toy. This metaphor further emphasizes the senselessness of the police perceiving Rice’s toy gun as a threat, instead of reading the situation correctly. The fact that Rice was a child and the fact that he was in a park should have suggested to the police that he was playing with a toy. Thus, even in the metaphor where the boat is compared to a leaf, Vuong still makes it clear that it’s a toy.