Life Is Motion
In Oklahoma,Bonnie and Josie,Dressed in calico,Danced around a stump.They cried,“Ohoyaho,Ohoo” ...Celebrating the marriageOf flesh and air.
About this text
Life Is Motion is in the public domain. This text is taken from Harmonium, Project Gutenberg ebook #78743; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Wallace Stevens, Life Is Motion, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/life-is-motion.html, id L01064.
Form and metre
Life Is Motion is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.2 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 11% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 --A--A--- oklahoma · josie · calicoA · stump · cried · ohoyahoA · ohoo · marriage · air
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In Oklahoma, | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
| Bonnie and Josie, | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Dressed in calico, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Danced around a stump. | 5 | ····· |
| They cried, | 2 | ·· |
| “Ohoyaho, | 3 | ··· |
| Ohoo” ... | 2 | ·· |
| Celebrating the marriage | 7 | /˘·˘·/˘ |
| Of flesh and air. | 4 | ···· |
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.