Analysis of Prism
Joe Strickland 1986 (Hobbysville, SC)
With every word,
I try to capture
The essence of you.
But in the act of description,
I lose something
Of your substance,
As if trying to hold the wind
In the palm
Of my outstretched hand.
You are a mystery
Unfathomable,
With depths I can only glimpse.
I try to understand you better,
But my understanding
Is incomplete,
A mere shadow
Of your true self,
Projected through
The prism of my mind.
It seems the closer I get to you,
The more elusive you become,
Like trying to catch a fleeting dream
That disappears upon waking.
My examination distorts you,
Transforming you
From substance to silhouette.
And as I contemplate in silence,
The paradox
Becomes more complex,
Revealing the limitations
Of language
And the distance between two souls.
Every analysis
Creates distance,
Between the subject
And the object,
Between the observer
And the observed.
In this world of subjectivity,
We attempt to map out reality,
To gain a sense of control and meaning,
But the very act of observation,
Alters the very thing we see.
So we must accept the uncertainty,
And the limitations
Of our perception,
And embrace the mystery
Of our existence,
Knowing that we can only approximate,
The essence of reality
And each other.
Scheme | XABCDEFXX GXXADXXXBF BXXDBBX EXXHXXXEIIAX GGDCGGHCGEXGA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11001 11110 01011 10011010 1110 1110 11101101 001 11011 110100 01000 1111101 11101110 11010 1001 011 1111 0101 010111 110101111 01010101 110110101 1010110 10010011 0101 110101 01110010 010 01110 0100010 110 00100111 1000100 0110 01001 0010 010010 0001 011100100 10111110 1101101010 101011010 10010111 1110100100 00010 110010 0010100 110010 10111100100 010110 0110 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,227 |
Words | 259 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 10, 7, 12, 13 |
Lines Amount | 51 |
Letters per line (avg) | 19 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 193 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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"Prism" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/160565/prism>.
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