Analysis of On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders
Franklin P. Adams 1881 (Chicago, Illinois) – 1960 (New York City, New York)
WITH BOWS TO KEATS AND KEITH'S
["The World's Most Famous Shoulders"]
Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent upon a peak in Darien."
"BEE" PALMER has taken the raw human--all too human--stuff of the underworld, with its sighs of sadness and regret, its mad merriment, its swift blaze of passion, its turbulent dances, its outlaw music, its songs of the social bandit, and made a new art product of the theatre. She is to the sources of jazz and the blues what François Villon was to the wild life of Paris. Both have found exquisite blossoms of art in the sector of life most removed from the concert room and the boudoir, and their harvest has the vigour, the resolute life, the stimulating quality, the indelible impress of daredevil, care-free, do-as-you-please lives of the picturesque men and women who defy convention. --From Keith's Press Agent.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of jazz,
And many goodly arms and shoulders seen
Quiver and Quake--if you know what I mean;
I've seen a lot, as everybody has.
Some plaudits got, while others got the razz.
But when I saw Bee Palmer, shimmy queen,
I shook--in sympathy--my troubled bean,
And said, "This is the utter razmatazz."
Then felt I like some patient with a pain
When a new surgeon swims into his ken,
Or like stout Brodie, when, with reeling brain,
He jumped into the river. There and then
I swayed and took the morning train
To Norwalk, Naugatuck, and Darien.
Scheme | AX BCBCBDX EFFEAFFA GCGCGD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101 0111010 1111110101 1011010111 1110111101 11100100111 1111010101 1001010100 1101100110111011010111110001111111110110010111011101010010111010100111010110011111110111101111001011001011101101010010110101010101001000010001110111111110100101010101011110 1111000111 0101010101 1001111111 110111001 1101110101 1111110101 1101001101 01110101 1111110101 1011010111 1111011101 1101010101 11010101 11100100 |
Characters | 1,603 |
Words | 288 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 7, 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 23 |
Letters per line (avg) | 54 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 311 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 71 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:27 min read
- 122 Views
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"On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/14145/on-first-looking-into-bee-palmer%27s-shoulders>.
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