Analysis of Billy Collins once again. In a former cigar factory.
PoetryDispatch No. 346 | May 2, 2011
Poetry Workshop Held in a
Former Cigar Factory in Key West
After our final class, when we disbanded
as the cigar rollers here had disbanded decades ago,
getting up from their benches for the last time
as the man who read to them during their shift
closed his book without marking the page where he left off,
I complimented myself on my restraint.
For never in that sunny white building
did I draw an analogy between cigar-making and poetry.
Not even after I had studied the display case
containing the bladed chaveta, the ring gauge,
and the hand guillotine with its measuring rule
did I suggest that the cigar might be a model for the poem.
Nor did I ever cite the exemplary industry
of those anonymous rollers and cutters—
the best producing 300 cigars in a day
compared to 3 flawless poems in a lifetime if you’re lucky–
who worked the broad leaves of tobacco
into cylinders ready to be held lightly in the hand.
Not once did I imply that tightly rolling an intuition
into a perfectly shaped, handmade thing.
might encourage a reader to remove the brightly colored
encircling band and slip it over her finger
and take the poet as her spouse in a sudden puff of smoke.
No, I kept all of that to myself, until now.
Scheme | A XX XBXXXX CDXXXX DXADBX XCXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111 1001100 1001100011 101010111010 100110110100101 10111101011 10111111011 1110110011111 110011101 1100110110 111101000101100100 1101011100011 0100101011 00110111001 11011001110101010 11110100100100 11010010010 0101001001 01110100011110 11011101 011001011110001 111101110101010 0101001111 101001010101010 0100101110010 010101010010111 11111111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,278 |
Words | 246 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 167 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Written on February 21, 2023
Submitted by dougb.21370 on February 21, 2023
Modified on April 02, 2023
- 1:13 min read
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"Billy Collins once again. In a former cigar factory." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/152026/billy-collins-once-again.-in-a-former-cigar-factory.>.
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