A New National Anthem

“A New National Anthem” is a monostich, or a one-stanza poem. It is made up of 34 unmetered, unrhymed lines of roughly equivalent length. The last line of the poem is a noteworthy exception to this rule. At four words long, it is half the length of any other line, a noticeable difference:

[…] that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

and isn’t that enough (Lines 29-34)?

Breaking the consistent shape at the very end of the poem gives the reader a visual cue that the poem has reached its end. This makes it less likely that the reader will read to the very end of the last line and look down for the next one, only to be surprised by white space. The last line is also the only line to end in a question mark, another difference that gives the last line a sense of finality and importance.

The poem is eight sentences long. The first seven sentences span across the first 17 lines of the poem, ranging in length from one to six lines. The last sentence is 17 lines long, making it as long as the previous seven sentences put together.