Central Heating

Free Verse

The poem has no set rhyme or rhythm scheme. That means that Reverdy was free to do what he liked with the form of the poem.

That doesn't mean, however, that it's arranged helter-skelter on the page. If you look (or read aloud) carefully, you'll find that the varying line lengths have quite an effect. Just take a look at, for example, the first two lines of the first and third stanzas. The pattern here is that one small line, for example "A tiny light," is followed by one much longer line, such as "You see a tiny light coming down landing on your stomach and lighting you up." This has the effect of building the tension and rhythm of the poem—if we were reading this poem aloud, we'd read the short line very slowly, and then speed up to roll with the momentum of the second line.

This short-to-long form is somewhat repeated in the three stanzas. We get two short stanzas, followed by a longer stanza 3. The first two stanzas set us up for the flowing explosion of the third.

It's almost as if we're dealing with a heating system at the beginning of winter. It sputters into life, falters, sputters into life again, and then turns on full blast when we hit the third and last stanza.