The Mountain

“The Mountain” is not technically a formal poem, but it uses regular stanza breaks and some conventions of the villanelle. The poem is divided into seven quatrains, or stanzas of four lines each. Each stanza ends with the phrase “I do not know my age” (Lines 4, 12, 20, 28) or “Tell me how old I am” (Lines 8, 16, 24, 32, 36). The alternating refrains create a circular structure of repetition, always bringing the poem back to the same central question or idea. This mimics one of the rules of the villanelle, which also repeats one or two phrases throughout the poem. At the end of a villanelle, the two phrases repeat side by side, but in the end of “The Mountain,” the line changes to “I want to know my age” (Line 35) before repeating again, “Tell me how old I am” (Line 36). This emphasizes the change in the line “I do not know how old I am” to the more forceful declaration “I want to know my age.” The variation from “I do not know” to “I want to know” gives the mountain more agency, with it declaring that it is capable of desire, of intention, of a search for knowledge.