Poem Analysis Sherman Alexies On the Amtrak From Boston...

An Analysis of Sherman Alexies On the Amtrak Sherman Alexies On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City is a free verse poem that gives voice to Native American resentment and contempt. It is composed in a series of quatrains, with the last line of the poem standing alone, symbolizing the poet himself who feels alienated a stranger in his own land, now overrun by an enemy. This paper will examine the poems use of meter, imagery and symbolism, and give an interpretation of Alexies thoughts and feelings in On the Amtrak. Alexie does not hold hard and fast to any metrical pattern. Doing so would be to conform to a poetical tradition of the enemy. Instead, Alexies composition is mainly syllabic. Some lines, such as into what she has been taught. I have learned, may be classified as iambic pentameter (the end of the line consisting of spondees rather than iambs); but the very next line that follows shows that Alexie has no attachment to such form: little more about American history during my few days is neither iambic nor pentameter ; it has roughly nine and a half feet with several different foot types. Alexie also refuses to capitalize the first word of each new line, thus further abandoning the poetical structure of the so-called enemy. In other words, Alexies verse is free and independent of classical traditions. Like his people, upon whom he meditates in the poem, Alexies words are unruled by any of the conventions of the white people whom Alexie