Analysis of Cut While Shaving
Charles Bukowski 1920 (Andernach) – 1994 (San Pedro)
It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.
don't I know it? I
answered.
I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night
nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.
I walked down the stairway and
into it.
Scheme | XAXABCDDCEBXXDXX XX EXD XXXX XX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111101101 01010101011 10 110111110111 1101111011 110111 111011 1110111 1111 110010 111100 011010 010101001 1111 110111 11 11111 10 11011010 1110110111 1 101 11101 10110110 01 111010 011 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 706 |
Words | 137 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 2, 3, 4, 2 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 112 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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"Cut While Shaving" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/54427/cut-while-shaving>.
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