The Canyon's Edge

In Part 2 of Nora’s narration, she switches from prose to poetry. Aside from a few haiku poems, most are written in free verse, a form that originated in the 19th century with the French vers libre form. Unlike formal poetry that follows specific rules of rhyme and meter, free verse doesn’t adhere to consistent rhyme or rhythm patterns. Even though free verse doesn’t follow the constraints of formal poetry, it includes rhyme and meter—but in ways that more closely replicate the flow and natural patterns of speech. The language itself determines the form of the poem. Nora uses sounds to create rhyme with poetic devices like alliteration, assonance, consonance, and slant rhyme. Repetition of words and phrases and enjambment (carrying a thought or phrase from one line of poetry to the next without a grammatical break) give Nora’s poetry structure. For example, in “Why?” Nora feels helpless, like “a single drop of water / in a raging river, / a single grain of sand / in a suffocating dust storm, / a single speck of palo verde pollen / floating on the dry desert breeze” (57).