Free Verse

“Bonnard's Garden” is written in free verse, meaning that no regular meter is present; that is, the poet has not arranged his words in such a way as to produce a rhythmic flow. For coherence of form, the lines are all of similar length, with each stanza consisting of four lines, but no other structure exists. Similarly, the lines do not rhyme. If the poet were to read the work aloud, he would most likely allow the lines to flow subtly into one another, perhaps as if reading delicate, well-crafted prose.

Language as Art

In the foreword to Barot's collection The Darker Fall, the poet Stanley Plumly describes Barot's skill at creating art through his use of language, whereby a given portion of one of his poems is in essence an “implicative, animated still life.” That is, his work consists of small portraits of scenes featuring clusters...