Moo: A Novel

Concrete poetry is poetry that uses typographical features—the shapes and sizes of words and the font chosen to convey them—to emphasize the meaning of particular words and phrases. Many of the poems in Moo are concrete poetry, which can be appealing because the typographical clues make meaning more accessible and create visual appeal through movement and variety. In the poem “Bugs,” for instance, the repetitive and frantic motion of scratching a bug bite is mimicked in the crowding together of the repeated word “itch” and by its larger font size: “ITCHITCHITCHITCHED!” (143) Many poems contain words and lines printed in shapes that mimic actions or objects--for example, the poem “Waiting” conveys the motion of a liquid dripping by printing the word “drips” one letter at a time moving vertically down the page (143).

Creech employs repetition—the use of a word, phrase, idea, or grammatical construction—to create emphasis in several different ways. One form of repetition she uses is the refrain, where a word or phrase recurs over and over throughout a work. For example, the idea that “[i]t gets cold in Maine, you know” is repeated throughout the poem “People Said” to emphasize the negative way that some people react to the family’s proposed move to Maine (12).