The internal structure of Arvio's poem "Memory" is, unlike a galloping, faithfully iambic Victorian epic, informal and therefore unobtrusive. This allows the poet to construct lines that sound like conversation to the reader. The flexibility of free verse allows the poet a series of stressed syllables, which give the lines a special poetic weight. For example, in the lines "did he recall the blue vein in my wrist / or only the ice-blue burn in my eye?" the poet uses the pounding cadence of "ice-blue burn" to emphasize the anger the argument elicited. Though the poem is relatively informal, Arvio uses sonic devices to emphasize other elements in the poem. The word "why" is rhymed at the end of a line with the word "eye" in the first stanza and again in the final stanza. The structure of the poem may not be guided by the rules of...