Analysis of The Song

Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941



That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine
floating like cotton-down,
And the harsh and terrible screaming,
And that strange vibration at the roots of us…
Desire, fierce, like a song…
And we heard
(Do you remember?)
All the Red Cross bands on Fifth avenue
And bugles in little home towns
And children's harmonicas bleating

And after…
(Do you remember?)
The drollery of the wind on our faces,
And horizons reeling,
And the terror of the plain
Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun…
Under us - threshing and twanging
Torn-up roots of the Song…


Scheme xxxxaxbxCxxa cCxaxxab
Poetic Form Tetractys  (35%)
Etheree  (35%)
Metre 110010110101 101011111010 001101101001 101101 001010010 01101010111 0101101 011 11010 101111110 01001011 01011 010 11010 0110111010 001010 0010101 1010110101 101101 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 673
Words 124
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 12, 8
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 263
Words per stanza (avg) 60
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

37 sec read
33

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde feminist and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences She along with other political poets of the early Modernist period has been coming under increasing critical scrutiny at the beginning of the twenty-first century more…

All Lola Ridge poems | Lola Ridge Books

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