Digging

“Digging” does not follow a specific form or meter, and the poem seems to actively resist form by eschewing consistent stanza and line lengths. The poem consists of 31 lines and eight stanzas, arranged in varying manners. There are two couplets, as well as several tercets, or stanzas arranged in groups of three lines, and quatrains. However, there also stanzas containing as many as eight lines. The layout of the poem is like that of spade-marked ground, mottled and inconsistent, strewn with patches of overturned soil.

While the form of “Digging” is purposefully variable, the meter also takes on a sporadic cadence. Parts of the lines are essentially iambic, with metrical feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. However, the iambic pattern is inconsistent and does not follow any established metrical rules. Instead, the iambic phrases used in the poem serve more to imitate a specific sound: the “squelch and slap” (Line 25) of the spade by lending the poem a beat that is occasionally steady, like the drum of a heart or steps in a march, but also uneven and occasionally off—the sound of people working with tools.