Different Ways to Pray

Nye’s “Different Ways to Pray” is a free verse, unrhyming poem that lacks a metrical pattern. Divided into six stanzas of varying line lengths, the poem is organized based on content: The content determines the stanza breaks. For instance, each stanza describes and defines a new form of prayer. Because the poem’s form is dictated by its content, the poem—which is told through the voice of a third person omniscient narrator in the past tense—functions much like a narrative or a story being told to the reader. Using elements of narrative such as repetition and anaphora, Nye creates expectation (“There was” [Line 1] and “There were” [Line 10]) that drives the poem forward.

“Different Ways to Pray” also functions as a list poem, which is defined as collecting content in a list form. Tending to not have a fixed rhyme scheme or a set rhyming pattern (like Nye’s), the list order can either provide coherence or it can show the way the speaker’s mind moves through the subject (in this case, forms of prayer).