Cumulatives
Cumulatives - form Summary
Cumulative Repetition Builds Portrait
The poem uses free verse and a cumulative, additive structure to sketch three local stories: a storm-battered headland, a beaten prize-fighter, and a man gossiped about in the streets. Each stanza piles ordinary actions and remembered details, letting small repetitions and connective phrasing enlarge the scene and shape communal memory. The form emphasizes how local myth and rumor accrete into a public identity.
Read Complete AnalysesStorms have beaten on this point of land And ships gone to wreck here and the passers-by remember it with talk on the deck at night as they near it. Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter And his battles have held the sporting pages and on the street they indicate him with their right fore-finger as one who once wore a championship belt. A hundred stories have been published and a thousand rumored About why this tall dark man has divorced two beautiful young women And married a third who resembles the first two and they shake their heads and say, "There he goes," when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain along the city streets.
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