Analysis of Poem by Billy Collins: The Lanyard.
Wayne Blair 1951 (London)
The Lanyard
BY BILLY COLLINS
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Scheme | AXBCXXBA XBDXEF AXXXBF XACEGX XAGXXF XXADXX FXXBXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010 11010 01011110010 1011111 10111001101010 11111010101 11110011010100 1111010110 11010101100 11101011100 01111101101 1010101 1011111101 01010011110 11101101010 1111111111 111111110 110101001 01111010 101101110 111101101 0110010 111010011 1011100111 11111110 01111010101 0111101 010101001010 11101111 01110001010 011110101 1111010110100 110101000101 11101 01111101110 011110101111 011111101 101011011 1111001110 10100101111 01110111 111110111 111010111 1110110111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,725 |
Words | 369 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 190 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 48 |
About this poem
Billy is a Master at irony.
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Written on March 17, 2023
Submitted by dougb.19255 on March 17, 2023
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:50 min read
- 31 Views
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"Poem by Billy Collins: The Lanyard." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/154256/poem-by-billy-collins%3A-the-lanyard.>.
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