Analysis of Playing it by Ear
Greg Lanier 1962 (Atlanta, GA)
Those who paint by numbers
Are the bleakest of them all
The art of mediocrity
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE HALL!
I say, peacock!
Poppycock!
Go rake your ivy leaves
I’ll take my pen and old guitar
And sail the seven seas
The proposition I purport
If you’d care to hear
The only minstrels worth a damn
Are playing it by ear
Both thoroughbreds and pack mules
can one day bind the book.
| Scheme | XAXAXXXXX XBXB XX |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 111110 1010111 0110100 101101 111 10 111101 11110101 010101 001011 11111 01010101 110111 1101011 111101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
| Characters | 362 |
| Words | 72 |
| Sentences | 4 |
| Stanzas | 3 |
| Stanza Lengths | 9, 4, 2 |
| Lines Amount | 15 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
| Words per line (avg) | 5 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 98 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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"Playing it by Ear" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/99611/playing-it-by-ear>.
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