Meter

McGinley uses an iambic meter in her poem. Iambic meter is the most common metric measure in English poetry. It consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. For example, in the first line of her poem, the pattern would be broken down like this: "It seems vain-glor-i-ous and proud" with the words it and vain unstressed; and the words seems and the syllable glor- stressed; the syllable i- (in the middle of the word glorious) is unstressed, while the last syllable in this word -ous is stressed; and ending with the word and being unstressed and the word proud being stressed. This produces a somewhat singsong effect, almost like a child's nursery rhyme, but it also makes the poem very easy to read. The meter is very similar to the natural meter of conversational speech.

The poem is built on tetrameters and trimeters...