Analysis of Bowery Afternoon

Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941



Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life…

Deadly uniformity
Of eyes and windows
Alike devoid of light…
Holes wherein life scratches -
Mangy life
Nosing to the gutter's end…

Show-rooms and mimic pillars
Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules
Bosoms and posturing thighs…

Over all the Elevated
Droning like a bloated fly.


Scheme XAXXB XXXXBX XAX XX
Poetic Form
Metre 10010 1101111 10110 100111111 101101 100100 11010 010111 101110 101 101011 1101010 10111101 101001 1010100 1010101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 417
Words 65
Sentences 2
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 3, 2
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 84
Words per stanza (avg) 16
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

19 sec read
181

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde feminist and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences She along with other political poets of the early Modernist period has been coming under increasing critical scrutiny at the beginning of the twenty-first century more…

All Lola Ridge poems | Lola Ridge Books

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