Strange! by John Frederick Nims- Andrew Collins

I’d have you known! It puzzles me forever   

To hear, day in, day out, the words men use,   

But never a single word about you, never.   

Strange!—in your every gesture, worlds of news.   

On busses people talk. On curbs I hear them;   

In parks I listen, barbershop and bar.   

In banks they murmur, and I sidle near them;   

But none allude to you there. None so far.

I read books too, and turn the pages, spying:   

You must be there, one beautiful as you!   

But never, not by name. No planes are flying   

Your name in lacy trailers past the blue   

Marquees of heaven. No trumpets cry your fame.   

Strange!—how no constellations spell your name!

Rhyme Scheme- ABABCDCD EFEFG G

This Sonnet is of the Shakespearean form, with the only alterations being the grouping of the lines. There is also a slight de-emphasis on the rhyme in lines 5 and 7 where the rhyming word isn't on the last syllable. The overall idea of this poem is very Shakespearean in that it is celebrating a woman's beauty, in this case by wondering why she isn't given more credit for it. The shift or volta occurs around line 9, when the speaker switches from wondering why the woman isn't talked about more often to explaining how he thinks she should be honored. This shift marks the change in the speaker's tone from frustrated and confused to proud and flattering. Something that emphasizes the confused tone in the first half is his use of feminine endings. The poem as a whole is in iambic pentameter, but many of the first few lines have an extra feminine syllable that leaves them very open-ended and confused just like the

There are also many caesuras that emphasize different aspects of the speaker's point. In the second stanza they emphasize the lack of celebration of the woman, and in the first they emphasize the amount of communication that the speaker observes while he listens for the one topic that he believes is worthy of discussion. And in the final stanza they emphasize the speaker's overall feeling about this situation—that it is strange. That same effect is achieved by the separation of the last line. His entire point is summarized in one line, which is made more effective by its isolation.