Divertimiento
Miserable little womanin a brown coat--quit whining!My hand for you!We’ll skip down the tin cornicesof Main Streetflicking the dull roof-linewith our toe-tips!Hop clear of the bank! Apin-wheel round the white flag-pole.
And I’ll sing you the whilea thing to split your sidesabout Johann Sebastian Bach,the father of music, who hadthree wives and twenty-two children.
About this text
Divertimiento is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Book of Poems, Al Que Quiere!, Project Gutenberg ebook #51997; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Carlos Williams, Divertimiento, in Al Que Quiere! (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51997, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/williams-al-que-quiere/divertimiento.html, id L01132.
Form and metre
Divertimiento is 15 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 53% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Miserable little woman | 8 | /˘˘˘/˘/˘ |
| in a brown coat-- | 4 | ···· |
| quit whining! | 3 | ·/˘ |
| My hand for you! | 4 | ···· |
| We’ll skip down the tin cornices | 8 | ········ |
| of Main Street | 3 | ··· |
| flicking the dull roof-line | 6 | /˘···· |
| with our toe-tips! | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Hop clear of the bank! A | 6 | ······ |
| pin-wheel round the white flag-pole. | 7 | ······· |
| And I’ll sing you the while | 6 | ······ |
| a thing to split your sides | 6 | ······ |
| about Johann Sebastian Bach, | 8 | ··/˘˘/˘· |
| the father of music, who had | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| three wives and twenty-two children. | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
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.