Analysis of O Carib Isle!
Harold Hart Crane 1899 (Garrettsville, Ohio) – 1932 (Gulf of Mexico)
The tarantula rattling at the lily’s foot
Across the feet of the dead, laid in white sand
Near the coral beach—nor zigzag fiddle crabs
Side-stilting from the path (that shift, subvert
And anagrammatize your name)—No, nothing here
Below the palsy that one eucalyptus lifts
In wrinkled shadows—mourns.
And yet suppose
I count these nacreous frames of tropic death,
Brutal necklaces of shells around each grave
Squared off so carefully. Then
To the white sand I may speak a name, fertile
Albeit in a stranger tongue. Tree names, flower names
Deliberate, gainsay death’s brittle crypt. Meanwhile
The wind that knots itself in one great death—
Coils and withdraws. So syllables want breath.
But where is the Captain of this doubloon isle
Without a turnstile? Who but catchword crabs
Patrols the dry groins of the underbrush?
What man, or What
Is Commissioner of mildew throughout the ambushed senses?
His Carib mathematics web the eyes’ baked lenses!
Under the poinciana, of a noon or afternoon
Let fiery blossoms clot the light, render my ghost
Sieved upward, white and black along the air
Until it meets the blue’s comedian host.
Let not the pilgrim see himself again
For slow evisceration bound like those huge terrapin
Each daybreak on the wharf, their brine-caked eyes;
—Spiked, overturned; such thunder in their strain!
And clenched beaks coughing for the surge again!
Slagged of the hurricane—I, cast within its flow,
Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant.
You have given me the shell, Satan,—carbonic amulet
Sere of the sun exploded in the sea.
Scheme | XXAXXXX XBXC XXDBB DAXEXX XFXF CCXXC XXEX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (23%) |
Metre | 00100101011 01011011011 10101110101 111011101 01111101 01010110101 01011 0101 111111101 10100110111 1111001 10111110110 0100010111101 0100111011 0111010111 1001110011 1110101111 01011111 010111010 1111 1010011010110 11010101110 1001101101 1100101011011 1101010101 01110101001 1101010101 11111111 111011111 110110011 0111010101 11010110111 01101110010 1110101101100 1101010001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,584 |
Words | 258 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 4, 5, 6, 4, 5, 4 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 179 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 215 Views
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"O Carib Isle!" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/16819/o-carib-isle%21>.
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