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 Views
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"Barry Holden" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8518/barry-holden>.
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