Poetry Assignment #1

Mr Fear


He follows us, he keeps track.
Each day his lists are longer.
Here, death, and here,
something like it.

Mr. Fear, we say in our dreams,
what do you have for me tonight?
And he looks through his sack,
his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds
the right one. Maybe he’s sorry.
Tell me, Mr. Fear,
what must I carry

away from your dream.
Make it small, please.
Let it fit in my pocket,
let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.
Fear, let me have
a small brown bat
and a purse of crickets

like the ones I heard
singing last night
out there in the stubbly field
before I slept, and met you.

—Lawrence Raab

   Mr Fear by Lawrence Raab uses personification to bring fear to life in this eerie and yet exhilarating poem. Raab creates Mr. Fear, a character that visits him in his dreams with “his black sack of troubles,” in a personal matter where he becomes familiar to the reader making Mr. Fear that much more haunting. The human form of fear in this dream seems horrific and even threatening however Mr. Fear doesn’t have to say a word. Nor does the writer give us vivid images of his face or structure but instead lets us sculpt Mr. Fear for ourselves. Personally, I thought of a figure similar to Death when picturing Mr. Fear in this poem. What also struck me as interesting was the fact that he’s fighting against the fear by trying to befriend it at the same time. He calls him mister fear instead of just fear. He also doesn’t want something frightening to come out of Mr. Fear’s sack so instead he asks kindly for small objects and adds “please”. Raab’s style seemed to be somewhat simplistic to me. Every stanza contained four lines and his word choice was quite simplistic. But it was that same simplicity that made the poem easier for everyone who read it to feel the same emotion of fear behind it all. Overall, I enjoyed this poem because it was simple to read and yet had many different ways to look at it.