Drops in the Bucket

by Kay Ryan
page 533

This poem automatically caught my eye with its very thin shape. Most lines of the poem only have two words in it, some with three and only one line with one word. It makes sense for the poem to has this long rectangular shape because of the subject matter. When one thinks of drops in a bucket, it is almost an instantaneous action. As you read the poem, your eyes flow down the page at a very rapid rate, paralleling the journey of a water droplet hitting the bottom of the bucket. Just having the poem shaped this way enhances the feeling the poem is trying to exude. If the lines were longer, it would definitely have a different flow to it, more like the action of a river traveling downstream. Something that stands out is that both of the last 2 lines of the poem have 3 words; these still make the lines short but the lines do not break like this in any other part of the poem. This reminded me of the bottom of the bucket where all the drops eventually pool into one another to create a bigger surface area. The poem even talks about the water at the bottom of the bucket as if it were its own bigger entity, totally different from the incoming drops.