Analysis of Faces
Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941
A late snow beats
With cold white fists upon the tenements -
Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,
Like tall old slatterns
Pulling aprons about their heads.
Lights slanting out of Mott Street
Gibber out,
Or dribble through bar-room slits,
Anonymous shapes
Conniving behind shuttered panes
Caper and disappear…
Where the Bowery
Is throbbing like a fistula
Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.
Livid faces
Glimmer in furtive doorways,
Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys,
Smears of faces like muddied beads,
Making a ghastly rosary
The night mumbles over
And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper…
Patrolling arcs
Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line
Stalk them as they pass,
Silent as though accouched of the darkness,
And the wind noses among them,
Like a skunk
That roots about the heart…
Colder:
And the Elevated slams upon the silence
Like a ponderous door.
Then all is still again,
Save for the wind fumbling over
The emptily swaying faces -
The wind rummaging
Like an old Jew…
Faces in glimmering rows…
(No sign of the abject life -
Not even a blasphemy…)
But the spindle legs keep time
To a limping rhythm,
And the shadows twitch upon the snow
Convulsively -
As though death played
With some ungainly dolls.
Scheme | ABXAX XXXXXXCDB EXXXCFFXXXXXXX FXXXFEXX XXCXXXDXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (24%) |
Metre | 0111 1111010100 100101010 1111 10100111 1101111 11 1101111 01001 01001101 10001 10100 110101 110111 1010 100101 11110110110 11101101 10010100 011010 001111001010 0101 101110011 11111 101111010 00110011 101 110101 10 00100101010 101001 111101 110110010 011010 01100 1111 1001001 1110101 1100100 1010111 101010 00110101 1 1111 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,210 |
Words | 213 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 9, 14, 8, 9 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 198 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 09, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 239 Views
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"Faces" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25899/faces>.
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