"Ethics" is written in the form called "free verse," which depends on images and the natural rhythms of speech for its expression, not on meter or rhyme. Many modern and contemporary American poets in the last two centuries have written in free verse, revealing the range of its powers in the relative absence of "formal" patterns. Walt Whitman, for example, drew upon the "music" inherent in free verse, Robert Frost explored its capacity for drama, and William Carlos Williams explored the power of the image to provide meaning and design.

Pastan's free verse poem tells a story about knowledge, beginning in a classroom in one kind of institution, and ending in another, a museum. However, the experience is not expressed academically or in institutional jargon. Most of the poem-story is told in the simple language, rhythm, and tone of a conversation. Pastan's diction, or word choice, comes from...