Analysis of 3 Poems: Love Song, My Papa's Waltz and On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City

In "My Papa's Waltz" and "Love Song," Roethke and Brodsky, respectively, employ a formal end rhyme scheme that is the conventional ABAB rhyme. The first stanza of "My Papa's Waltz" rhyme the first and third lines with "breath" and "death," while the second and fourth lines rhyme "dizzy" and "easy" (Roethke 1). Brodsky also employs this rhyme scheme in "Love Song," and like Roethke his diction includes site rhyme in addition to regular rhyme. In the fourth stanza Brodsky (1) rhymes lines one and three with "lava" and "lover," while rhyming the second and fourth lines with "source" and "divorce." In contrast to this rhyme scheme, Sherman Alexie uses free verse that does not include rhyme in his poem. As he tells us in the first stanza's first two lines, "The white women across the aisle from me says 'Look, / look at all the history, that house" (Alexie 1). While Brodsky and Roethke also complete the thoughts and sentences in each stanza, Alexie's poem runs thoughts and sentences together in differe