Bohemia
Authors and actors and artists and suchNever know nothing, and never know much.Sculptors and singers and those of their kidneyTell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necksStart off from anywhere, end up at sex.Diarists, critics, and similar roeNever say nothing, and never say no.People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;God, for a man that solicits insurance!
About this text
Bohemia is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sunset Gun: Poems (Boni & Liveright, 1928), English Wikisource; 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, Bohemia, in Sunset Gun (1928), text of English Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-sunset-gun/bohemia.html, id L27435.
Form and metre
Bohemia is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABBCCDDEE suchA · muchA · kidneyB · sydneyB · necksC · sexC · roeD · noD · enduranceE · insuranceE
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Authors and actors and artists and such | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| Never know nothing, and never know much. | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney | 11 | /˘·/˘····/˘ |
| Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney. | 11 | ··˘/·˘/˘·/˘ |
| Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necks | 10 | /··/˘··/˘· |
| Start off from anywhere, end up at sex. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Diarists, critics, and similar roe | 9 | ··/˘·/˘˘· |
| Never say nothing, and never say no. | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| People Who Do Things exceed my endurance; | 11 | /˘···˘/·/˘˘ |
| God, for a man that solicits insurance! | 11 | ·····˘/˘˘/˘ |
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.