A Cut Flower (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Karl Shapiro
- First Published: 1942
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Nature, Beauty, Flowers, Women, Death or dying, Life and death, Universe
The Poem
“A Cut Flower” is a poem of twenty-seven lines divided into three nine-line stanzas with no apparent rhyme scheme. Most of the lines fall into regular iambic pentameter, which means that each line has ten syllables, with five stresses, or accents, and the stress is on the second syllable in each metrical unit of two syllables. This meter is considered to mirror the natural rhythms of English speech most closely, and it contributes to the illusion that the poem is spoken testimony. Several of the lines deviate from this strict meter, which prevents the pattern from...
[The entire page is 1519 words long]
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