The Schooner Flight

“The Schooner Flight” consists of 11 sections, each ranging from 9 to 77 lines. Metrically, the poem maintains a relatively consistent line length of roughly five 5 or 10 syllables, making the lines conform to the most common length in English verse, pentameter. While Walcott employs meter for emphasis and to create aurally evocative passages, the poem eschews any fixed metrical pattern.

Because of its length, use of dialect and vernacular, and lack of definitive meter, the poem may seem at first to be free verse. However, the text follows a loose pattern of end rhymes. While there are many variations, the poem continually falls back into an ABCB rhyme scheme. For example, the poem’s second stanza begins with lines that conclude on the following words: “things,” “Road,” “streets,” “load” (Lines 25, 26, 27, 28). Directly following these lines, however, are lines ending on the words “soul,” “bohbohl,” and “Creole” (Lines 30, 31, 32), following an AAA rhyme scheme that plays against the poem’s baseline rhyme scheme. Such variation is common throughout the 474-line poem, creating emphasis and never allowing the poem to slip into formulaic sing-song

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