Analysis of Arras
I found Claudette at the tourist office in Arras,
handing out maps in a square no one leaves. Everything
radiates gray, and calendars
curl in their uselessness, but the river
will hardly drown them all, bent as it is
on the west. It all makes as much sense
as unscented candles. Uncomfortable shoes startle
cobblestones. This is the place for a sigh.
This is the place where cracks struggle toward each
other like lovers at night. Remember,
Claudette, crashing through ponds, resting on elms.
We crowded grass into our clothes and declared
ourselves nature preserves. Such delightful scratching. You
were a bird sanctuary, hoarding swallows in your
nostrils, a blue jay in your throat. And
when snow came and the grass dried out,
we laughed at slippery commerce, emptying granaries,
tin can meadows. Winter here, we know,
would be hell, Claudette, without the cardinals.
Scheme | AXABA AXXXB AXXXX XAXA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110110101001 101100111110 1010100 10111010 1101111111 101111111 111001000110 101101101 11011110011 1011011010 0110111011 110101101001 00110011010101 001100101001 100110110 11100111 111100101001 11110111 11101010100 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 852 |
Words | 144 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 4 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 175 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 2 Views
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"Arras" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/66064/arras>.
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