Analysis of Mama
Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941
Mama’s face
is smooth and pale as tea-rose leaves.
That ivory oval of aunt Gem
you sucked the miniature off
had black black hair like mama.
Pit-it-ty-pat,
Mama walks so fast,
street lamps jig
without bending a leg…
lights in the windows
play twinkling tunes
on crimson and blue
bottles like bubbles
big as balloons…
Faster and faster…
and pink light spurts
over cakes doing polkas
in little white shirts,
with cake-princesses
in flounced white skirts.
Pit-pat—
mama walks slower…
slower and… slower…
Eyes… lamps… stars…
acres and acres of stars…
bells… and sleepily
flapping feet….
You’re glad mama walks slow.
It’s nice to be carried along
up high near the stars
that look at you with a grave, great look.
Every night
mama sings you to sleep.
When she sings, O for the light of thine eyes Dolores,
there’s a castle on a cliff
and the sea roars like lions.
It leaps at the castle
and the cliff knocks it down
but always the sea
shakes its flattened head
and gets up again.
The castle has no roof
so the rain spins silvery webs in it,
and Dolores’ face
floats dim and beautiful
the way flowers do when they are drowned.
Step by white step
she goes up the castle stairs,
but the stair goes up into the sky
and the sky keeps going up too,
and none of them ever get there.
When mama sings Ba ba black sheep,
the stars seem to shine through her voice
so everything has to be still,
and when she has finished singing
her song goes up off the earth,
higher and higher…
till it is only as big as a tiny silver bird
with nothing but moonlight around it.
Scheme | AXXXX BXXXXCDXCEFXFXF BEEGGHXXXGX XIXXXJXHXXXKAJXXXXDX IXXXXEXK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101 11011111 110010111 1101001 1111110 1111 10111 111 011001 10010 11001 11001 10110 1101 10010 0111 1011010 01011 11100 0111 11 10110 10010 111 1001011 10100 101 111011 11111001 11101 111110111 1001 101111 1111101111010 1010101 0011110 111010 001111 1101 11101 01101 010111 1011100101 00101 110100 011011111 1111 1110101 101110101 00111011 01111011 11011111 01111101 1101111 01111010 0111101 10010 11110111010101 11011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,532 |
Words | 290 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 15, 11, 20, 8 |
Lines Amount | 59 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 242 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 58 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:27 min read
- 138 Views
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"Mama" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25910/mama>.
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