"Coal" begins with a strong declaration:
I
Is the total black, being spoken
From the earth's inside.
This single sentence is broken into three lines, with the first line containing only the word "I." By separating "I" from the rest of the sentence, the poet highlights it, asking them to consider the significance of this pronoun and the speaker's own individuality. However, the enjambment across lines 1-3 encourages the reader to read the sentence seamlessly through. In other words, the "I" is separated visually, but not when reading the poem aloud. These effects help signal that the poem deals with both individual and collective experience.
That the speaker equates this "I" with "the total black" of "the earth's inside" hints that the poem concerns Black identity, which it imagines as something deeply organic and natural. The voice of the poem, and the voice of "black[ness]" itself, is "spoken / From the earth's inside," suggesting both that it's part of nature and that it arises from the psychological or historical underground. That is, it conveys thoughts, emotions, etc. that have been buried or repressed (by society, the speaker's own psyche, or both). The poem's title, "Coal," also describes something that is "black" and buried underground. Combining the title with these opening lines, it becomes clear that the speaker is using "Coal"—a "black" substance mined from "inside" the earth—as a metaphor for Black identity.
The strange syntax of this opening clause grabs the reader's attention: "I / Is the total black." Again, this is a clue that the poem's speaker isn't necessarily a single individual, or if they are, they're speaking to a collective experience. If the speaker were referring to themselves personally as "the total black," they would more likely have said "I / am the total black." But "I / is" suggests that they're talking about the word "I," and the idea of Black identity itself. (Alternatively, one might interpret this syntax as AAVE, and synonymous with "I / am," in which case the speaker would still be referring to the way Black people express themselves—using and celebrating their own modes of speech rather than accepting "standard" English as the only correct mode.) Notice, too, that the line break in line 2 emphasizes the word "spoken," helping to introduce language/speech/self-expression as a core subject of the poem.
As a free verse poem, "Coal" doesn't follow a set meter or rhyme scheme. Instead, its lines progress organically, its rhythms mirroring the dynamic patterns of the poet's own thought and speech. In this way, the poem seems to stake out an independent identity through its very form.