Structure Where I Come from

The poem is set out into three stanzas, the last stanza ( A door- fields of snow) being a rhyming couplet, with the words ‘blow’ and ‘snows’. If you look at the poem at the end of the first stanza, the final line ends as a half line and at the same time the first line at the beginning of the second stanza starts exactly after the half line. The purpose Elizabeth did that because she would like to continue the second stanza exactly where the first stanza ended; so she has the same line of thought, but she moved from one place to another (city to the countryside). She also ends the first stanza with ‘smell of subway crowded at rush hours’ and starts the second stanza with ‘where I come from’, this is done to show the distinct change between the first and second stanza, with the first being a crowded noisy environment of an expected city while the other being a country life.
If you look at the lines in the poem every line except 5 out of the 21 total lines have punctuation (either comma, full stops, colons, or even semi colons) splitting one line into two parts or sections. This technique is a great one and is used to show the reader that the poem should be read slowly which will give them more time to take in and appreciate what they’re reading, so this is a poem were if read quickly the reader will end up confused and lost and understand nothing about what you just have read. Apart from the pace read of this poem, finally, this poem is more of a contemporary and free versed