Analysis of Summer Rhythms
William Goresko 1951 (Philadelphia, PA) – 2008 (Willow Grove, PA)
In the early morning I awake
To the sound of cicadas
Stirring the August air
With their electric pulse.
The chattering chorus moves
From tree to tree; now in
Hushed and ominous rattles,
Like thousands of castanets,
Now in violent crescendos,
Torrents of angry clatter
Thrashing the muddy sky.
After a long inchoate sleep
Subterraneanly suspended,
They burst into the blazing day.
From under leaf and branch
They commune unseen,
In silent murmur and savage raving,
From dawn to dusk
Their tribal secrets
Make the sunlight shimmer.
They greet each new summer
With the same ancient ritual;
After long years entombed
They crawl from their crypts,
Mate and deposit their progeny
Which emerge at the same interval
To begin the cycle again.
The cicadas slowly slice
Through summer skies,
Their relentless buzz
Trims light from every day
And with the waning sun
Their fury boils
As if they know
Their end is near at hand.
High up, heavy with cicadas,
The trees gently sway
In the summer breeze.
As they move to and fro
On the face of the day,
Their gauzy winged dwellers
Cast circles of sound
That spread over the sky
Before dying away;
Endless whispered turnings.
Scheme | XAXXXXXAABC XXDXXXXXB BEXXXEX XXADXXFX ADXFDXXCDA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (27%) |
Metre | 001010101 1011010 100101 110101 0100101 111110 1010010 11011 101001 1011010 100101 100111 1010 11010101 110101 11001 0101001010 1111 11010 10110 111110 10110100 101101 11111 100101100 101101100 10101001 0010101 1101 10101 1111001 010101 1101 1111 111111 11101010 01101 00101 111101 101101 11110 11011 111001 011001 10101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,114 |
Words | 199 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 9, 7, 8, 10 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 187 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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"Summer Rhythms" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/98714/summer-rhythms>.
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