Patterns of Rhythm: What I Said

Some poems rely on repeated line structure to add to the meaning, but Norman Stock’s “What I Said” (page 1000) is not one of them. Written in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “What I Said” carries an irregular rhythm to emphasize the tumultuous emotions felt during the time. The feet of the poem are largely iambs, but they frequently alternate to anapests. These rising meters, created primarily of monosyllabic words, create an almost hysteric tone. The lines of “What I Said” cannot be easily measured, as the number of feet per line increases throughout the poem. Stock begins the poem with a trimeter, but the lines become so big as to even become nonameters. Likewise, he alternates between feminine and masculine endings: “went home| and cried| and,” for example, is feminine, while “and how| can we| expect| to go| on aft|er this” is masculine. Both the irregular line lengths and the variation of endings serve to further the hysteric tone of the poem, while also creating a bumbling, ranting voice.

Line 10’s iambic monometer “we live” is very interesting, as it blends into line 9 when read aloud but distinctly stands out to the reading eye. Every line but the last one in “What I Said” is a run-on line when read aloud, but line 10 contains caesuras that make it seem like it could be an end-stopped line. In the last line, line 13, the last foot is a spondee designed to sharply contrast the rest of the poem. The entire poem seems babbling and upset, but “we kill them” is resolute. It seems to me that line 10 and 13 were emphasized so they could be compared to each other; how will “we live” is the question, and “we kill them” is the answer.