Analysis of Barry Holden

Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)



The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set fire to the house
They were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
And I sat in the court two weeks
Listening to every witness.
It was clear he had got her in a family way;
And to let the child be born
Would not do.
Well, how about me with eight children,
And one coming, and the farm
Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?
And when I got home that night,
(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,
And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)
The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,
Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,
Was the hatchet!
And just as I entered there was my wife,
Standing before me, big with child.
She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,
And I killed her.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTKU
Poetic Form
Metre 0101110101 110101 1010101 101011010 01100111 100110010 1111110001001 0110111 111 110111110 0110001 101101 0111111 10100101010101 0010110001 0111111101 101111101 1010 0111101111 10011111 1100110101 0110
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 717
Words 148
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 22
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 563
Words per stanza (avg) 145
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
122

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. more…

All Edgar Lee Masters poems | Edgar Lee Masters Books

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