In the poem “Joyas Volardes” the author Brian Doyle goes into depth about the different hearts found in different living things. Doyle begins with the poem by talking about the hummingbirds’ heart and how much of an impact it makes on the hummingbird and ends it by comparing the hearts of different animals. Doyle then transitions the poem into a story about the human heart and describes the ability it has. In this poem, Doyle creates a connection with the reader by using different sentence structure and underlying meanings to show how important the heart is.

In the first line of this poem, Doyle wants the reader to “consider the hummingbird for a long moment.” This is a very direct statement that is clearly an attempt to get the readers to think for a moment. Right away the reader feels like they are being spoken to which causes them to be more interested in what they are about to read. When he tells the reader to consider the hummingbird they want to keep reading to see why they were asked to think about it for a “long moment.” Doyle does a good job here hooking the readers into the poem early while giving them a look at what is going to be talked about in the poem. In the first paragraph you see that Doyle uses a lot of punctuation between the descriptions of the hummingbird to emphasize the information given. Doyle wants readers to understand how small but important the heart of a hummingbird is because even though it seems like it is small and useless, it does a lot for the hummingbird. In this case, the heart of the hummingbird is representing the heart of a person. It may not seem to do a lot for us but it is more than just an organ that pumps blood around your body, it gives us feelings and emotions which is very important for humans. In the third paragraph, Doyle writes more about all the work that the hummingbird needs to put in and mentions that every living being has two billion heartbeats in a lifetime. He follows this with a very strong message saying “You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.” Doyle mentions this in the poem so he can speak to readers on a personal level, asking them how they wish to live their lives, a fast, upbeat and risky way of life like a hummingbird or the slow and safe way like a tortoise. Now at the beginning of the fourth paragraph Doyle begins to switch gears a bit. Instead of continuing to talk about the small heart of a Hummingbird, he talks about the largest heart in the world which belongs to the blue whale. Doyle uses this transition from small to large hearts in order to show that there may be a difference in size or shape of a heart, but like Doyle says later in the poem, “No living being is without interior liquid motion.” Every organism has some sort of heart or eternal liquid motion that keeps them alive so its not about how big or small your heart is, but how you use that heart in everyday life. A person is using their heart efficiently if they are keeping it active by experiencing different kinds of emotions throughout the day. In paragraph five you see that Doyle is comparing the heart sizes of different animals, insects, and even bacteria. After making all these comparisons he finishes off the paragraph by saying “We all churn inside.” Doyle chose to put this in the poem to show that it may seem like everyone or everything is different but in the end, we are all doing the same thing inside, churning. In the last paragraph, Doyle begins to talk about the things that the heart does and the different things it goes through. He talks about how as a kid, your heart is pure and it seems like nothing can hurt you, but as you grow we realize that there are many things that can hurt you, “no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall” your heart is still fragile and can break easily. The underlying message that Doyle is trying to send to the readers is that your heart will go through some rough patches and no matter how much you try to protect it, youre still going to get hurt in the end. However, like the great Kelly Clarkson said. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” There may be things that bring you down but an active heart is a healthy heart!

Doyle does an amazing job at using sentence structure here to create underlying messages to the reader that are not difficult to spot. They are subtle enough that it forces the reader to become more engaged in the reading and look closer into the passage but obvious enough so that the reader doesn’t sit there for an extended period of time trying to figure out what something means. This perfect balance creates an interesting read for all readers who like a passage with a larger meaning than what it says.