Get ready for everything.
Pack your bag just in case
Everything changes sooner than expected.
We have to leave everything behind.
Pack everything you need
To continue your life
Everywhere we end up.
Prepare for everywhere.
Make sure that you have thought of everything.
Every contingency,
Every fear of failure must be banished.
At least every effort must be made
To keep our eye on the goal.
Everything is going to be fine.
Remember how, after Mother died everything changed?
No matter what she said, getting him back meant financial security - a roof over her head and everything that went along with it.
Everything considered, it was easier to make the decision to take the job than to placate Mary.
And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice, in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind that commended itself to Butler, whose type of mind was opposed to everything that savoured of enthusiasm.
OK, that's everything.
Water every plant one more time.
Did you remember everything?
Lock every door.
Look forward
To everything.
"""".
Note: Some sentences were lifted from .yourdictionary.com.
In the middle of this poem there are some sentences that appear out of nowhere. Does that bother you? If you were looking at a collage, would it bother you to see something pasted into the composition that didn't seem to belong? I doubt it, because a collage is often created out of disparate elements but they are integral to the composition. So it is with a poem. What each of those disparate sentences does share with the other lines is the word "everything" or "every". The very first line says "Get ready for everything". After those dislocated sentences (in the middle of the poem) comes the line, "Ok, that's everything." Mother (after whose death everything changed) represents the house or the homestead, a roof, a place to live. Now that she is dead we can move on. The Butler character represents small-mindedness. We are leaving both behind, well-prepared and looking forward to everything, which is another word for the infinite or infinite possibilities. The poem is open-ended.
Let's say that this is a fractal poem. The poem is presenting a fractal pattern. By including the word "everything" in every sentence, which is a word that is all-or infinitely inclusive, we have a recurring infinite pattern. The poem scales that pattern up and down. For example, consider: How can the death of the mother, the house and the small minded "Butler" be everything? Because it is a micro-cosmos containing the fractal or open-ended pattern that is set up by the repetition of the word everything. What is implied here is that small-mindedness, though introverted, could constitute a universe unto itself.
Once the fractal is represented or adumbrated, there is no need to go on and on ad infinitum. What about the end? Once we "get" the infinite nature of the pattern, we have access or ingress to the infinite. The poem is about finally exiting from the micro-cosmos to the macro-cosmos. It is about stepping out from the small-minded, homebound micro version of everything to the expansive-minded macro-version of everything.
(Article changed on Feb 23, 2022 at 3:30 PM EST)
