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Summary Of A Step Away From Them By Frank OHather

Decent Essays
In the poem, “A Step Away from Them” by Frank O’Hara, there are five stanzas of varying length. In each stanza, there is a different amount of indention that occurs, leading up to the fourth stanza, where the indention afterwards stays relatively the same. The poem does not have a very clear rhyme scheme or meter, which showcases the natural flow of the poem, representing its narrative style and its use of stream of consciousness. Going along with the idea of stream of consciousness being present in this poem, the use of transition words also adds to this idea of a narrative style stream of consciousness writing as the transitions help push the reader towards the next line. In this poem, the punctuation and line breaks represent that of a normal conversation that one would have with friends- no real structure or reasoning, for the most part, behind the use of punctuation or line breaks besides to add to the natural flow of the poem itself. In the first stanza, the poem does not contain line breaks or unusual punctuation, but instead is very grammatically correct. However, as the reader gets closer to the fourth stanza, the punctuation and line breaks become more similar to that as a conversation between friends. There are two unusual moments of capitalization in the third and fourth stanzas, “Juliet’s/Corner” (O’Hara 28-29) and “Bullfight” (O’Hara 42), but besides that, capitalization rules are applied throughout the poem.

In the poem, “A Step Away from Them” by Frank
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