September | Style

September Style

Varying Lines and Margins

The poem does not have a formal structure of rhyme and meter. Punctuation is sparse, particularly in the first fourteen lines, and conventions of typography are not always observed. (For example, not all the sentences begin with a capital letter or end with a period.) However, that does not mean the poem lacks structure, and it is a structure that appeals to the eye as much as the ear, through the way the poem is laid out on the page. The lines are artfully arranged to reflect the thematic movement of the poem from outer to inner realities. The first five lines, which record the placid autumnal scene, appear as a single block of text, with the first words of each line having the same left-hand margins. This arrangement corresponds to a fixed landscape—one that is what it is and cannot be altered. But in the remainder of the poem,...
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