The Lovers of the Poor

“The Lovers of the Poor” is a satirical free verse poem with 99 lines broken into seven sections. The lengths of the sections vary from four lines to 28 lines long; new sections are indicated by an indented line like a paragraph break. These verse paragraphs are narrative: They tell a story starting when the ladies arrive and ending when the ladies leave the home of the poor.

The lines vary in length, as well as in meter. Many lines hover around 10-13 syllables, filling most of a standard book-size page, but creating a ragged right-hand edge. However, the indented lines sometimes run past the righthand margin of a standard book-size page. This adds to the verse paragraph structure of the piece.

Throughout the poem, Brooks incorporates both perfect and slant rhyme, though not uniformly. For instance, Lines 95 and 96 have a perfect rhyme at the ends of the lines: “Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall, / They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall” (Lines 95,96). When two subsequent lines have end-rhymes, they can be called a