Eurydice

Vuong wrote the free verse poem "Eurydice" in the lyric style. Free verse possesses no guidelines, unlike other forms. It allows poets to write without worrying about fitting their ideas into a specific rhyme and rhythmic scheme. Lyric poetry focuses on the writer's emotions and outlook. While containing narrative moments, lyric poems mostly forgo a linear story with a beginning, middle, and end. Because "Eurydice" suggests its events rather than directly telling the reader, the reader focuses on the speaker's reactions, recollections, emotions, and epiphanies. Vuong drops the reader into an event that’s already in process, beginning with an unidentified “It’s.” The speaker says it is "not / about the light—but how dark / it makes you" (Lines 12-14). The poem suggests that it does not matter what one knows. What matter is what one feels and experiences.

"Eurydice" unfolds over a single long stanza of 36 lines. For reference, a stanza is a group of lines. Poets create multiple stanzas by ending one stanza, adding space, and starting another. The poem's cast includes the speaker, their companion, gravity, a “him,” perhaps the companion, and a doe.