'John & Mary' By Stephen Dunn

The epigraph, “John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met,” establishes a basis for the poem “John & Mary” by Stephen Dunn. In addition to the beginning epigraph, the author uses small details such as an exclamation and question to better convey his message. The main point about John and Mary is the fact that they have never met, but there is still a relationship between the two of them just like the way some things in life seem to be close but in reality, they are very far apart. The beginning of this poem starts off light and humorous with no real message, but as the poem moves along the tone of the poem quickly turns to a serious message from the author pertaining to the perception of distance between

The epigraph before the poem from a freshman’s short story gives the reader a brief idea of what the poem could possibly be about without giving any details away through saying John and Mary have never met. The reader could get the impression that the poem regards the sporadic relationship between two people named John and Mary who have never met when they read “They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met.” Since there are no separate stanzas found throughout the poem, the main body can be read together as a whole. Therefore, the entire poem all together in one stanza allows for the ending to be directly related to the beginning of the poem. In the main body of the poem, Dunn add a question at line six to smoothly transfer from one simile to another. Line six says, “How could they get together?” right after he explains how John and Mary were like postal clerks in different time zones. He uses this question as a humorous transition from the simile about postal clerks because postal clerks in two different zip codes have no reason to have anything to do with each other to the next simile found in the poem. Towards the middle of the poem, Dunn uses an exclamation point to emphasize the similarity of the dolphin in the Atlantic Ocean to the relationship between John and Mary. The simile about the dolphin

This simile begins the poem with a comparison between the relationship between two gazelles who occupy different plains. This is a clever way to begin the poem because the author uses this same method of comparison between two distant things in the rest of his comparisons. This simile in particular is a good example of distance between two similar things that Dunn is comparing. In this example, the two gazelles are thought to be similar because they are the same species, but as one reads further it is apparent that the gazelles seem close but in reality are far away from each other. This is easy to see because Dunn says the gazelles occupy different plains and are both running from separate lions. Another example of a simile found throughout the poem based off the freshman’s short story can be found from line ten to twelve. The comparison of a tuna caught in a net and a tuna playfully swimming among the sea accurately represents the close appearance but long distance in reality among two separate tunas. These similes relate to the relationship of John and Mary because one may believe that John and Mary are in fact close, but in reality they are just two human beings on earth occupying their own space with no hope of ever