The Grammar Lesson

I chose to focus on Steve Kowit’s “The Grammar Lesson” because I thought the content of the poem was really important. It is really common among people today to have a very minimal understand of grammar and for them to be completely unaware of it. This oblivion has always bothered me, and clearly it bothered Kowit too since he chose this topic as his subject matter. Kowit used many poetic techniques. This poem is a villanelle, consisting of five stanzas of three lines and one of four lines. It has two reoccurring lines: “a noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does (page 312, line 1)” and “The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz (page 312, line 3).” Each time these lines are repeated, their importance and meaning change slightly. Kowit uses perfect rhymes within these stanzes, rhyming words like “does” and “fuzz,” and slant rhymes such as “known” and “brown.” He also uses alliteration, meaning the consonants of multiple words begin the same. Alliteration is pleasing to the ear when read aloud because it flows so quickly. Examples include “an article, a can’s a noun (page 312, line 5),” and “or might be, might meaning not yet known (page 313, line 8).” There are also many examples of caesuras throughout the poem, meaning that a pause occurs within a line. Caesuras change rhythm and can put a greater emphasis on a certain part because a pause gives you more time to think about what you have just read. I thought the poem was a really creative way to educate people on the subject of grammar. It is almost comical in how blatant he is; by putting these grammar rules in such a simple way, he’s sort of subtly calling out peoples’ stupidity.