Burning a Book

William Stafford’s “Burning a Book” is a 19-line, free verse poem, meaning that there are no consistent patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or meter throughout the entirety of the piece. The poem contains three stanzas, or groupings of lines. Stanza 1 is eight lines in length, Stanza 2 is nine lines in length, and Stanza 3 is a mere two lines in length.

Stafford deviates from traditional poetic structures within the first four lines of Stanza 1. Lines 1-4 display the potential for rhyme with the inclusion of the words “time” (Line 2) and “spine” (Line 4). However, instead of creating a traditional quatrain—a grouping of four lines that typically include alternating rhymes—Stafford withholds from his audience the satisfaction of an end rhyme. In an alternating ABCB pattern, Lines 1-4 read as follows: “Protecting each other, right in the center / a few pages glow a long time. / The cover goes first, then outer leaves / curling away, a scattering then spine” (Lines 1-4). There is a predictability to this pattern that Stafford purposefully avoids, instead writing that “curling away, the spine and a scattering” (Line 4).