Burning a Book

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

William Stafford’s “Burning a Book” is a 19-line, free verse poem, meaning that there are no consistent patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or meter throughout the entirety of the piece. The poem contains three stanzas, or groupings of lines. Stanza 1 is eight lines in length, Stanza 2 is nine lines in length, and Stanza 3 is a mere two lines in length.

Stafford deviates from traditional poetic structures within the first four lines of Stanza 1. Lines 1-4 display the potential for rhyme with the inclusion of the words “time” (Line 2) and “spine” (Line 4). However, instead of creating a traditional quatrain—a grouping of four lines that typically include alternating rhymes—Stafford withholds from his audience the satisfaction of an end rhyme. In an alternating ABCB pattern, Lines 1-4 read as follows: “Protecting each other, right in the center / a few pages glow a long time. / The cover goes first, then outer leaves / curling away, a scattering then spine” (Lines 1-4). There is a predictability to this pattern that Stafford purposefully avoids, instead writing that “curling away, the spine and a scattering” (Line 4). This deviation from pattern and rhyme mirrors the breakdown of the book described in the poem. The dissonance readers hear in the unmatched rhyming words evokes a response like that of seeing a book burn: It puts readers on edge.

The starkness of the final, unrhymed couplet after the longest stanza is exacerbated by the white space surrounding it on the physical page. Stafford calls attention to the last lines as they convey the strongest opinion of the entire poem: Everyone is guilty of censorship, no matter the method.

Figurative Language: Personification

Personification is a form of figurative language that endows nonhuman subjects with human characteristics. This figure of speech is a form of metaphor in that it ascribes the qualities of one thing to another. The personification of flames as apathetic and uncaring in the first stanza of “Burning a Book” is the most sustained image throughout the entirety of the poem (see: Symbols and Motifs “Fire”). Fire, having already been introduced in the concrete description of book burning, is seen as an apathetic being. The speaker states that “flame doesn’t care” (Line 7), and has no bias about what ought or ought not to burn. In likening flame to indifference, Stafford shifts the optics of book burning, making it more commonplace—a banal experience as opposed to a spectacle.

Caesura

Caesuras are stops or pauses in a metrical line of poetry often marked by punctuation or grammatical boundaries such as commas or periods. Stafford uses multiple caesuras throughout “Burning a Book,” giving readers a break every time new information is introduced within a stanza.

Stafford introduces an abundance of complicated themes throughout this short poem (see: Themes; Poem Analysis), so to mitigate audience exhaustion, he creates purposeful pauses using commas, periods, and em dashes to slow down the intake of information. In Stanza 1, there are caesuras within five of the eight lines, allowing readers to take in the initial image of the burning book in real time, as if watching it burn in front of their very eyes. Phrases ending with commas, like Line 1 (“[p]rotecting each other, right in the center”) are less forceful than those created with a period like Line 7 because the pause is less sustained. Line 7 draws attention to the personification of the flames as uncaring, highlighting the importance of the image above the others due to the length of time readers spend reading it. Stafford employs this same tactic in the short, final stanza of “Burning a Book,” using two caesuras in the span of two lines to indicate the importance of what is being discussed within them (see: Poem Analysis).