Analysis of To Larkin

Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941



Is it you I see go by the window, Jim Larkin—you not looking
     at me nor any one,
  And your shadow swaying from East to West?
  Strange that you should be walking free—you shut down without light,
  And your legs tied up with a knot of iron.
  One hundred million men and women go inevitably about their affairs,
  In the somnolent way
  Of men before a great drunkenness….
  They do not see you go by their windows, Jim Larkin,
  With your eyes bloody as the sunset
  And your shadow gaunt upon the sky…
  You, and the like of you, that life
  Is crushing for their frantic wines.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLM
Poetic Form
Metre 11111110101101110 111101 011101111 11111101111011 01111101110 11010101010100001101 001001 110101100 1111111110110 11110101 01110101 10011111 11011101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 589
Words 109
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 13
Lines Amount 13
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 436
Words per stanza (avg) 107
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

32 sec read
93

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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