Analysis of The Phones (with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe)

Paul Buchheit 1947 (Illinois)



Phones, phones, phones,
See the people with their phones,
Silver, pink and paisley phones,
On the subways and the buses and the sidewalks, all alone,
Lost in intimate exchanges with their phones, phones, phones.

Hear the murmuring of phones,
In their muffled monotones,
Feel the muted tremulations, like the buzzing of the drones,
Hear the pinging and the dinging of the phones.

Passing time, time, time,
  In a strange robotic rhyme,
  With the tintinnabulation of the tones, tones, tones,
  All the people look the same to me, like clones, clones, clones.

See the driver with the phone,
How it chills you to the bone,
See a world of seven billion navigating all alone,
Through the secret sibilations of the phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone.


Scheme AAABA AAAA CCAA BBBB
Poetic Form
Metre 111 1010111 1010101 1010010001101 1010001011111 1010011 01101 101011010101 1010001101 10111 001101 10110111 1010101111111 1010101 1111101 10111010100101 10101101111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 743
Words 126
Sentences 4
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 147
Words per stanza (avg) 32
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Submitted by pbuchheit on May 30, 2021

Modified on May 03, 2023

37 sec read
91

Paul Buchheit

Paul is an author of books, poems, progressive essays, and scientific journal articles. He recently completed his first historical novel, 1871: Rivers on Fire. more…

All Paul Buchheit poems | Paul Buchheit Books

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