Analysis of Basic French
That was the year Josh and I decided to argue
in French, a language we didn't know
enough of to lie in. We only knew the present
tense, the infinitives. There was no
conjugation--we or I. No decisions
to be made--her or me.
I could say table, bed,
but not ask what happened--a relief
not to know or to know my fears
correct. We loved the conversation
that could go on and on with two words:
Ça va. He sang the Marseillaise to me in bed.
It gave me goose bumps.
Our meals became prayers
hastened with bon apetit, the fear of bon voyage.
In English, I could make the whole
room spin around one word, make an hour
of tears over the inflection of one syllable. In French,
it was obvious we were ridiculous,
fallible, together. We were back in school.
Scheme | ABCBDEFGHIJFKLMNOPQR |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (25%) |
Metre | 110110110110 010101101 0111101101010 101111 0101111010 111011 111101 111110001 11111111 01110010 111101111 0111011101 11111 101011 10111011110 01011101 1101111110 111000101110001 11100100100 10001010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 728 |
Words | 142 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 574 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 142 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 6 Views
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"Basic French" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/66493/basic-french>.
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