Many of the poems in Broken Open depict the poet's experiences reciting poetry to the public in the streets of New York City. The collection includes a variety of poetic forms. Of these forms, the sonnet is prominent, along with a few varieties of curtal sonnets and a ballad on Emperor Norton, the folk legend of San Francisco. There are also numerous homages to poets and a scholar who have inspired him through the years such as Marianne Moore, Hazel Hall, John Keats, Robert Frost, John Rawls and others.