Analysis of Greater Than The Sum
John Jessup Kennan 1953 (Pomona)
I went looking for companionship
Her royalty thought I should beg
Would it cost me an eternal soul
Or just an arm and a leg?
This one has a heart of gold
On that you can depend
I just don't know how much it is
I think I wanna spend
The most beautiful of minds sometimes
Are kingdoms for the bats
The prettiest of trees sometimes
Just smuggle lines for rats
The tastiest of kisses
Just poison in the wine
This heart is just a jester
Playing tricks upon the mind
She says this heart is not for sale
But anything else has a price
And with a grin I thought within
You sound just like my wife
Her conscience laid to rest, she sleeps
Without regret alone
I empty out these cold mornings
In this echo of a home
There's no accounting for taste sometimes
An arm, a leg, or a heart
They say that the sum of the hole
Is greater than some of its parts
The most beautiful of minds sometimes
Are kingdoms for the bats
The prettiest of trees sometimes
Just smuggle lines for rats
The tastiest of kisses
Just poison in the wine
This heart is just a jester
Playing tricks upon the mind
She had a kingdom in her head
Kept in order by a pretty face
The prettiest of coffins
Lay these rotting bones to waste
Never knowing where we're going
We'll know when we arrive
She had the tastiest of kisses
She had the prettiest of big blue lies
The most beautiful of minds sometimes
Are kingdoms for the bats
The prettiest of trees sometimes
Just smuggle lines for rats
The tastiest of kisses
Just poison in the wine
This heart is just a jester
Playing tricks upon the mind
© John Kennan 2-14-20
| Scheme | xabaxcxc DEDEFGHI xxxx xxxxdxbx DEDEFGHI xxxxxxfx DEDEFGHI x |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 11101010 01001111 111110101 1111001 1110111 111101 11111111 111101 011001101 110101 01001101 110111 01110 110001 1111010 1010101 11111111 1101101 01011101 111111 01011111 010101 11011110 0110101 110101101 1101101 11101101 11011111 011001101 110101 01001101 110111 01110 110001 1111010 1010101 11010001 101010101 0100110 1110111 10101110 111101 1101110 1101001111 011001101 110101 01001101 110111 01110 110001 1111010 1010101 110 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 1,527 |
| Words | 302 |
| Sentences | 2 |
| Stanzas | 8 |
| Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 4, 8, 8, 8, 8, 1 |
| Lines Amount | 53 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
| Words per line (avg) | 6 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 157 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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"Greater Than The Sum" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/100830/greater-than-the-sum>.
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