#tom holmes

Over the last few years, I have been noticing an increasing use of the pronoun “you” in lyric poems, when grammatically the pronoun of use should be “I.” When I first presented on this observation at the 2018 Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers Conference, I proposed that this new lyric “you” was being used for two main reasons: one, to project an overwhelming emotion on to the reader (the “you”) so as to disperse the emotional intensity of the speaker/poet; and two, to create a type of bonding experience similar to the social media meme “The feeling when you,” with whatever follows “you” being a common experience between poet and reader. In both cases, “I” would be the proper pronoun to use, instead of “you.” These are two types of lyric “you,” which I will expand on a bit more below, but since then I also notice other uses—“you” as direct address to reader, “you” as part of a poet’s internal dialogue, and a cinematic “you.” Oftentimes, the new lyric “you” simultaneously behaves as a second-person pronoun that addresses the reader or an other and as a first-person pronoun representing the speaker.