Analysis Of The Poem By Billy Collins

This line, which also boasts of captivating alliteration and internal rhyme, slows down the pace of the poem as the stanza comes to an end. A similar pattern emerges throughout stanzas two to five and this gives the poem a musical feel. Rhythm is vital to the poem’s meaning because the fast-paced nature of the poem captures the kind of life led by black males. The fast and slow nature of the poem captures the unsettled nature of the lives led by black males. They could be leading a calm life one second, and the next their lives could change. This is particularly evidenced by stanza two which has lines that state, “All depends, all depends on the skin, / all depends on the skin you're living in” (Sundiata 21-22) and act as a refrain that recurs
in stanzas two, four and five. Through such repetition, some kind of crescendo builds up in the short second stanza to the end of the poem. The changes between short and long syllables which alter the poem’s pace show how fast the life of a black man can change when he runs into prejudiced police officers. Therefore, the rhythm complements the message by criticizing racial profiling from the start to the end of the poem.