"" byis a "narrative
poem." The term "narrative
poem" is used to describe a genre of poetry that tells
a story. Although the
work is formally a poem, in terms of content, it resembles a short story
with
a first person plural narrator who observes Cory's exterior actions but has no access
to
Cory's private thoughts or emotions.
In terms of poetic
structure, the poem
consists of four four-line stanzas. The stanzas are
rhymed "ABAB," a form known as
"open quatrains." Although this is the same
rhyme scheme as is used in "common
meter," the lines are iambic pentameter,
rather than the alternating tetrameter and
trimeter of common meter.
Nonetheless, the rhyme scheme produces some of the effect of a ballad,
a
traditional type of narrative verse. The rhymes are regular masculine rhymes and most of
the
lines are end-stopped rather than enjambed.
The form
of all the lines in the
poem is "iambic pentameter." This means that each
line consists of five iambic
"feet." In other words, the smallest repeated
rhythmical unit is an iambic foot
consisting of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable, and this pattern is
repeated five times
(thus "pentameter").
No comments:
Post a Comment