Out, Out—

During the Modernist period, most poets writing in English either abandoned traditional poetic forms or used them sparingly within a larger free-verse construct. However, Frost never strayed from traditional forms. (In fact, he reputedly said he would just as soon write in free verse as play tennis with the net down.) “‘Out, Out—’” is composed in blank verse, the form popularized by Shakespeare. Blank verse consists of lines in iambic pentameter that are unrhymed. Iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet; the iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. As such, the first line of the poem scans in this manner:

The buzz | saw snarled | and rat | tled in | the yard (Line 1).

However, readers often note Frost’s colloquial language; that is, it sounds like common speech rather than florid or ornate poetry. This is no small feat to render verse in a fixed form that echoes ordinary speech, and it is one of the factors that makes Frost’s work at once so approachable and also so poetic.