Bowery Afternoon
Drab discolorationOf faces, façades, pawn-shops,Second-hand clothing,Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,Odors of rancid life...
Deadly uniformityOf eyes and windowsAlike devoid of light...Holes wherein life scratches--Mangy lifeNosing to the gutter's end...
Show-rooms and mimic pillarsFlaunting out of their gaudy vestibulesBosoms and posturing thighs...
Over all the ElevatedDroning like a bloated fly.
Words in this poem
- nosing n.
- That part of the treadboard of a stair which projects over the riser; hence, any like projection, as the projecting edge of a molding.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bowery Afternoon is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Ghetto, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #4332; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lola Ridge, Bowery Afternoon, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/bowery-afternoon.html, id L20876.
Form and metre
Bowery Afternoon is 16 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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.
- 3 A-A pillarsA · vestibules · thighsA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Drab discoloration | 6 | ·˘·˘/˘ |
| Of faces, façades, pawn-shops, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Second-hand clothing, | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms, | 9 | /˘······· |
| Odors of rancid life... | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Deadly uniformity | 7 | /˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Of eyes and windows | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Alike devoid of light... | 6 | ˘/˘/·· |
| Holes wherein life scratches-- | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Mangy life | 3 | /˘· |
| Nosing to the gutter's end... | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Show-rooms and mimic pillars | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules | 10 | /˘···/˘/˘· |
| Bosoms and posturing thighs... | 7 | /˘·/˘˘· |
| Over all the Elevated | 8 | ····/˘·˘ |
| Droning like a bloated fly. | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
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.