Analysis of The Woman in the Moon



The Woman in the Moon

Once, I was Gibson's girl
round cheeked and rosy
placed in high altitude
as a lover's ecstasy.

At times blushing or laughing
I primped in the screened solitude
of an old-world charm.

I was the brilliant star
before new-world know-how
exposed me in penny dreadfuls
as a fading light.

Now, I hide behind my screen
fearing stargazers
who come to gape at a former beauty
cratered with a curious stain.


Scheme X XABA XBX XXAX XXAX
Poetic Form
Metre 010001 111101 11010 10110 1010100 1110110 1100110 11111 110101 011111 0110101 10101 1110111 1010 1111101010 10101001
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 429
Words 85
Sentences 5
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 1, 4, 3, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 67
Words per stanza (avg) 15

About this poem

The woman in the moon was once seen as a beautiful, romantic image. Contemporary science sees it as a planetary item.

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Written on April 15, 2023

Submitted by giandarr55 on September 10, 2023

26 sec read
44

John Lawrence Darretta

A former metropolitan New York college professor, John Lawrence Darretta holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Fordham University. As Fulbright Professor to Italy, he taught at universities in Milan and Turin. He studied at Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin and The American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He has written articles on American literature and Italian cinema and is author of Vittorio DeSica (G. K. Hall) and Before the Sun Has Set: Retribution in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor (Peter Lang Publishing). His poetry has appeared in America Magazine, Penwood Review, Journal of Pastoral Counseling, Haiku Journal, First Literary Review-East, The Avalon Literary Review and other venues. Nature’s Wheel, a book of his poetry, was published by Kelsay Books. more…

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    A figure of speech that compares two unlike things using "like" or "as" is called a _______.
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