Wrecked: A Poem Analysis

Many persons struggle with internal and outward battles that may leave one wrecked with worry, doubt, and conflicting decisions. In the poem “Wrecked: A Poem About Surrender” by Jill Power, one sees the internal struggle of a woman or man as he/she tries to decide to go forth in full power because half effort will no longer suffice. In the following explication, one will see how this struggle is vocalized through the use of metaphor, Biblical allusion, and repetition.

Power is an unusual poet since she is a simple woman, a wife, mother daughter and laundry doer. Power has no Nobel Prize or publishing contract, similar to most authors and poets read in academic works. However, Power is an expert on being wrecked, like most humans, she has experienced wreckage. Wreckage is something that completely destroys a person, it can happen internally or externally, while in either case both are affected. In Power’s poem the narrator is struggling, struggling to either continue fighting off the “wreck” or let the “wreck” consume him/her.

In referring to temporal and spatial setting, one can infer that the speaker is in a church service for in the beginning of the poem she says “the sounds of music surround me,” and she speaks of her knees beginning to “buckle,” which sound almost like she is present at an “altar call” towards

One of the first main references towards the Bible can be found in line 11, “Jesus wants all of me;” however, for some this may not first come as biblical reference, but as a children's book or song references. Ultimaly however “Jesus wants all of me” (11), is in fact a reference to Matthew 16:24, where it states, “Jesus told His disciples, ‘if anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me’”(Niv). Meaning one must put himself/herself aside and surrender solely to God; giving God all of