Analysis of Into the Words
I write myself into a poem
Not by intention
But by accident
I am there only because
I exist, and
I refuse not to.
I sing myself into a song
Never because I will it
But because I unwill it,
I refuse, but I never
Listen to myself,
And so I am there.
If I try, I can keep myself away
By obeying the rules of form,
Of meter,
Of rhyme,
I can force notions of times gone by
Follow the rules of poets past.
I can hyphenate words,
I can take out letters and
Replace them with apostrophes;
I can bounce along
In iambic pentameter, as though
I were a car of clowns at a circus:
Putt - putt - sputter!
Putt - putt - sproing!
Putt - putt - clatter!
Putt - putt - splash!
Putt - putt - hiss!
Putt - putt - crash!
Even then the form isn't honest,
Even then the meter only rings true occasionally,
The words sound fake with letters removed,
The rhyme is without song,
As if the presence of these old forms
Indicate my pretend absence
To announce that I am only
Hiding, still there all along,
Peeking behind some punctuation mark,
Disguising myself beneath a letter's tail,
Sneaking clues into metaphors,
Dropping code into onomatopoeia.
I write myself into a poem
Not by intention
But by accident
And even the me-shaped hole
I sometimes fight to squeeze into the words
Reveals that I exist and refuse not to.
Scheme | ABCdef ghhixx xxixxx jedgxx igikxk xlxgxx lgxxxx ABCxjf |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101010 11010 11100 1111001 1010 10111 1110101 1001111 101111 1011110 1011 01111 111111101 10100111 110 11 111101111 10011101 11101 1111100 1111 11101 01111 1001111010 1110 111 1110 111 111 111 101011010 101010101101000 011111001 011011 110101111 1010110 10111110 1011101 100110101 010101011 10101100 101011 11101010 11010 11100 0100111 1011110101 01110100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,302 |
Words | 283 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 125 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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"Into the Words" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/180060/into-the-words>.
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