Résumé
Razors pain you;Rivers are damp;Acids stain you;And drugs cause cramp.Guns aren't lawful;Nooses give;Gas smells awful;You might as well live.
About this text
Résumé is in the public domain. This text is taken from Enough Rope: Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #68353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Dorothy Parker, Résumé, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/r-sum.html, id L27362.
Form and metre
Résumé is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABCDCD youA · dampB · youA · crampB · lawfulC · giveD · awfulC · liveD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Razors pain you; | 4 | /˘·· |
| Rivers are damp; | 4 | /˘·· |
| Acids stain you; | 4 | /˘·· |
| And drugs cause cramp. | 4 | ···· |
| Guns aren't lawful; | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| Nooses give; | 3 | /˘· |
| Gas smells awful; | 4 | ··/˘ |
| You might as well live. | 5 | ····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.