Sunday Morning

“Sunday Morning” consists of eight sections of 15 lines each. Each 15-line section is made up of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, or blank verse. The form of the poem recalls a sonnet cycle, where a series of sonnets feed one into the other. However, a sonnet is one line shorter than the sections (14 lines in total), traditionally rhymes, and (if it is an English sonnet) has its final two lines (known as the couplet) function somewhat differently than the preceding 12 lines.

Despite exhibiting several similarities—the iambic pentameter lines, the centrality of argument, and only going one line over the traditional length—Stevens’s sections do not seem to be in dialogue with the traditional sonnet form. In fact, even their relationship to meter is highly relaxed. While the poem’s first line has the correct number of feet (metrical units) and stressed syllables for pentameter, it is too irregular to be considered iambic. Because this line introduces the reader to the rhythm of the poem, the text initially seems composed of irregularly metrical free verse. Just as the