Summary Of Fifteen By William Stafford

An Analysis of Fifteen Story-telling is an art form that has yet to be perfected, but humanity has gotten pretty close with William Stafford’s “Fifteen”. This poem executes several clever devices and shows the true potential of poetry. Even though it has some clever, subtle personification and some pure genius, metaphors, those are not the forefront of the poem. The most important, present device used is repetition. If a poet ever wants to drive a point home, repetition is the strongest weapon to use. There’s an idea that if you use a curse word enough, it devolves into meaning nothing. This principle of “Repeat a phrase until it dies” is used in Fifteen. Throughout the entire poem, Stafford repeats “I was fifteen.”. In the first stanza,