I look at the world

Like a lot of lyric poems, “I look at the world” has a small, compact shape. Although the poem has no standard meter, it has an organized form due to the even stanzas. The first two stanzas have five lines or quintains. In the last stanza, Hughes adds an extra line and turns the quintain into a sestet or a stanza with six lines. Since Hughes is not following meter, the lines can be as long or short as he wants. They are visibly uneven, with Line 2, 5, 9, and 13 jutting out more noticeably than the others. As with the length of the lines, the rhymes zigzag: Lines 2 and 4 rhyme in Stanza 1; Lines 3 and 5 rhyme in Stanza 1; Lines 8 and 10 rhyme in Stanza 2, and Lines 12, 14, and 16 rhyme in Stanza 3.

The lines’ varied length might tie into the theme of freedom. Some people in America have greater freedom than others, while some of the lines in Hughes’s poem receive more latitude than others. Moreover, the inconstant rhyme scheme could reflect the “walls oppression builds” (Line 9).