are there anymore sites that would contain a line to line analysis of the poem Velocity by Billy Collins

"line to line" ask your teacher, when she/he stops laughing tell her you couldn't find any on the web.

Les

Hint: no one online will do your homework for you.

Au contraire.

Velocity

In the club car that morning I had my notebook
(anapest, anapest, anapest, iamb, feminine ending - 4 feet?)
open on my lap and my pen uncapped,
(trochee, trochee, catalectic trochee, caesura, anapest, iamb, masc. ending - 5 feet?)
looking every inch the writer
(trochee, trochee, trochee, trochee, fem. ending - 4 feet?)
right down to the little writer’s frown on my face,
(iamb, anapest, iamb, iamb, anapest, masc. end. - 5 feet?)

(Oops - there is no consistent rhyme or rhythm to be found?)

but there was nothing to write
(iamb, iamb, anapest, masc. ending, 3 feet?)
about except life and death
(iamb, iamb, trochee, catalectic trochee?, masc. ending - 4 feet?)
and the low warning sound of the train whistle.
(anapest, trochee, then what? The meter is all over the place!)

(At this point, having found no consistency, I am beginning to suspect the author has written paragraphs of prose and randomly made line breaks to make them appear to be poetry. Not to say you should suggest that to your teacher, though, unless you desperately desire a low grade. See more links at the bottom of the page.)

I did not want to write about the scenery
that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,
hay rolled up meticulously—
things you see once and will never see again.

But I kept my pen moving by drawing
over and over again
the face of a motorcyclist in profile—

for no reason I can think of—
a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,
leaning forward, helmetless,
his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.

I also drew many lines to indicate speed,
to show the air becoming visible
as it broke over the biker’s face

the way it was breaking over the face
of the locomotive that was pulling me
toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha
for me and all the other stops to make

before the time would arrive to stop for good.
We must always look at things
from the point of view of eternity,

the college theologians used to insist,
from which, I imagine, we would all
appear to have speed lines trailing behind us
as we rush along the road of the world,

as we rush down the long tunnel of time—
the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,
but also the man reading by a fire,

speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book,
and the woman standing on a beach
studying the curve of horizon,
even the child asleep on a summer night,

speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,
from the white tips of the pillowcases,
and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.


See also, [tinyurl.com]