I Am Offering This Poem

Baca’s explicit declaration of love occurs four times, and each forms a one-line stanza. The “I love you” (Line 7) motif enlivens every word in the poem so they ring in a unified chorus. Each time he repeats the refrain, the speaker’s intention behind writing the poem and choosing his specific imagery becomes clearer. Since he loves the person to whom he writes, he extends comfort, fulfillment, and tenderness to them through his words.

The visual simplicity of the four one-line stanzas emphasize the directness of the speaker’s feelings and the fact that his love is all he has to offer despite the concreteness of the images he uses to convey the depth of his love. The speaker has no ambivalence about his feelings of love, allowing them to stand on their own, surrounded by longer stanzas that allow the speaker to describe the details of his love. Contained in the poem itself, which is the speaker’s only “offering” (Line 1) to his beloved, this feeling of love is all the speaker has to give.