Nearly every stanza of Cher Calderilla's «Determination» begins by telling us what it is not. "I didn't write this poem to…" comes back again and again, and each time the poem rules out a motive we might expect from a poem about a person. It isn't written to flatter, to seduce, to console, or even to praise. Only in the last lines does the speaker say what the poem is for, and the answer is startling: "I wrote this poem about you to save my own life."
The repetition works as a slow clearing of the ground. The early denials are concrete and physical: "overshirts & oversized tennis shoes," "curved cheekbones," a "DeNiro voice" on the phone, texts full of "Sweet half-threats of tender licentiousness." The "over-" in the first two clothing words suggests a man who dresses large, perhaps to look bigger than he is, and the phrase "Glinting masculine pride & promise" gives him a metallic shine, like armor. Yet the cheekbones "underline" eyes "crowded with time, loss, & sleeplessness," so the poem sees past the surface to someone worn down. The speaker notices all of this closely while insisting that noticing is not the point. The phrase "half-threats of tender licentiousness" is an oxymoron, and it captures a flirtation that is both inviting and dangerous. The man's heartache "Longing for another woman, / Yet another who got away" shows he is unavailable, and the speaker claims she isn't trying to heal him.
Then the poem swerves. "I didn't even write this as an ode" signals that we are moving from the ordinary to something bigger, and a new figure arrives: "the most brazen creature / I know, a slight female with the / Scariest demeanor in three countries." The hyperbole is funny, but the portrait is also tense. This woman has "A keen eye out for every menace, / Including myself," and is "Paranoid-prepared for my defection." Her alertness slides into destruction, "deconstruct, annihilate, all," where the list of verbs gets heavier and ends on a flat, total "all." The poem leaves unclear whether she is a separate person from the man or whether the "you" shifts as the speaker's attention does. Judging by the final line, the two may blur into one answer to the question of who the poem is about.
The turning point is the admission "Prone to lighting those matches I am, too." The matches rhyme in meaning with "annihilate." The speaker recognizes the same urge to burn things down in herself, and the odd, inverted word order makes the confession sound reluctant. What looked like a portrait of someone else becomes a mirror. That is where the title makes sense. «Determination» is not about stubbornness for its own sake. It describes a decision to "appreciate / What is tremendous in this world" instead of setting fire to it.
The form fits this. The poem is in free verse with no rhyme scheme, and its rhythm is that of speech, not song. The early stanzas are tidy couplets, and the later ones sprawl as the speaker's thoughts pile up. Line breaks leave small gaps of suspense, such as ending a line on "with the" so that "Scariest demeanor" lands harder in the next. The ampersands give a hurried, casual feel, as if the poem were scribbled in a notebook. The plain, almost conversational diction makes the last sentence feel more naked. In the same breath she says "I wrote this poem for me to recall" and then offers the high claim, "to save my own life."
What makes the poem interesting is that it reverses a familiar kind of love poem. Usually a poem about a person is a gift to them. Here the beloved, or the admired person, is closer to a reason than a recipient, and writing becomes a way of staying alive to wonder when cynicism and self-destruction are the easier options. By denying every smaller motive first, the poem makes that last one feel earned instead of dramatic.