Analysis of Harlan County Coal Miner
Sure as mountain men make moonshine
Amongst the dense and towering pines
Dust coats his lungs like kudzu vine
It's useless for mama to beg or whine.
Every morning, she stands in the door
Hoping and praying, evermore
Waving goodbye, as dad looks back
Come home wet, filthy, and black?!
Crawling underground into the mine
Through all that muck and grime
The family needs to be fed
And, sister is soon be wed.
Daddy will never ever go in hock
Such filthy work should be a crime.
"It's all the work, I Know", he opines
Digging like a mole for precious rock
Deep down in the coal mine.
Scheme | ABAA CCDD AEFF GEBG A |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110111 010101001 11111101 1101101111 1001011001 1001010 1011111 1111001 10100101 111101 01001111 0101111 1011010101 11011101 110111101 101011101 110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 564 |
Words | 108 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 17 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 91 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 4 Views
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"Harlan County Coal Miner" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/73056/harlan-county-coal-miner>.
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