Analysis of Princess Diana's Hat
Andrea Wyatt 1946
Thumbing through my Charles and Diana
paperdoll cutout book, I suddenly remember
Diana’s honeymoon hat, salmon-colored, with an Elizabethan plume.
Not long married ourselves, my second husband
and I watched the wedding on a huge color
television we rented for the occasion.
If I’d still been married to the Welsh poet,
I would be in bed, watching by myself, while he bitched about the filthy aristocrats, smoking and writing poetry. Don’t think its easy being married to a Welshman and he might say the same of me, a Brooklyn girl.
Of course he wasn’t wrong about the filthy aristocrats, who, let’s face it, don’t give
a rat’s ass about us.
When we take a vacation it’s not on a yacht to Sweden
but in an overheated station wagon to some crummy five-day
rental on the Eastern shore in August with no air conditioning.
When I think that our ordinary, nothing much has happened since
The Windsors got married in 1981 marriage worked out better than theirs,
it makes me crazy that we’re still together and they’re not.
What about Christmas? They’re in Scotland, dressed in kilts and gowns, doing the Highland fling in a goddamned castle, while we’re counting to make sure the kids have the same number of presents, making a Christmas Eve run to the market for stocking stuffers, trying to figure out how we’ll pay January’s rent before March.
So there we were, five hours before dawn,
snuggled up, eating strawberries and cream.
Like when we used to wake up early for Wimbledon,
when you’re supposed to eat strawberries and cream,
although it’s not as much fun since my favorite tennis players
John McEnroe and John Newcomb retired.
I argued with my father about McEnroe.
“He’s a jerk,” Dad said. But I liked his tantrums.
I thought they were thrilling, the way girls say, “Oh, he’s awful!”
when they don’t mean it. I love the way he screamed at the officials.
So there we were in 1981, lying in the dark, holding hands,
air conditioner wheezing, eating strawberries and cream,
getting teary as the royal coach passes by,
feeling like we were just like Charles and Diana,
kindred spirits, two couples embarking on life, together.
Scheme | ABXXBC XXXX CXX XXX X XDCDXX XXXX XDXAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101110010 1111100010 110110101100101 111000111010 01101010110 10011010010 11111010110 1110110111110101001010010100111101010101011101110101 1111101010010111111 011011 111001011101110 1011001010111011 10101010101110100 1111101001011101 010110010111011 11110101010011 10110101010101100101001101010111011011011010010111010110110110111111011 1110110011 11101001 1111111101100 1101111001 111111111001010 1100011001 110111001100 10111111110 11101001111110 1111111011110010 1110010001101 1010010101001 101010101101 101101110010 101011001011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 2,211 |
Words | 399 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 4, 3, 3, 1, 6, 4, 5 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 52 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 210 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
Font size:
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Princess Diana's Hat" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/128369/princess-diana%27s-hat>.
Discuss this Andrea Wyatt poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In