16 pages • 32 minutes read
Lawrence FerlinghettiSometime During Eternity . . .
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1958A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form/Meter
“Sometime During Eternity” is a lyric poem written in free verse, meaning that it has no set rhyme or meter. The poem also breaks with traditional lyrical forms in terms of its visual presentation: Instead of appearing in orderly, evenly aligned stanzas, the lines are printed in a more scattered fashion, with no line directly aligning under the line preceding it. This visual presentation gives the poem an erratic and unpredictable appearance, which is in keeping with the poem’s themes of the erratic and dynamic nature of storytelling. The large gaps created in the poem’s appearance is also suggestive of the ways in which certain pieces of information can become fragmented or even go completely missing over time.
Furthermore, the poem eschews traditional punctuation to create breathless, run-on sentences. This use of continuous thoughts from line to line without the use of end stop punctuation—a literary technique known as enjambement—creates a sense of momentum in the movement of the poem from one line to the next. The lack of punctuation also heightens the general sense of informality in the poem, which is in keeping with the speaker’s casual tone and irreverent treatment of the subject matter.
Satire
The poem is, in essence, satirical. Ferlinghetti uses satire to poke fun at some of the more outlandish aspects of religious mythologies, while maintaining a light-hearted tone. In reducing some traditionally serious aspects of Jesus’s story to something humorous or even ridiculous, the speaker draws attention to just how incredible the origin story of Christianity really is. Some examples of this technique include the way the speaker avoids referring to Jesus by name, instead calling him “some kind of carpenter” (Line 5) who is “from some square-type place / like Galilee” (Lines 6-7). Jesus’s claims of deep metaphysical insight are dismissed as “wailing” (Line 8) and as evidence that Jesus is “hot” (Line 32), as in delusional or mentally unwell. Even God is referred to as “the cat / who really laid it on us” (Lines 12-13), instead of being addressed by more traditional and reverent titles, such as Lord. In using this relentlessly satirical approach, Ferlinghetti demystifies his subject matter and lays bare some of the roots of skepticism regarding religious claims.
Diction Choices and Slang
The speaker’s tone is informal and conversational throughout the poem; one of the ways this style of speech is created is through the persistent use of specific diction choices in the form of slang. The speaker talks like someone from Ferlinghetti’s own time and context—1950s America—and the slang words reflects that cultural moment (See: Contextual Analysis). The speaker uses slang such as “square” (“some square-type place” [Line 6]), meaning something that is not lively or popular; “cat” (“the cat / who really laid it on us” [Line 12] and “as if he is the king cat” [Line 44, italics Ferlinghetti’s]), which is 1950s slang for a modern and usually fashionable person; “some guys” (Line 2); and “real cool” (Line 52). Even the speaker’s phrasing is informal, such as when he describes Jesus as “claiming he is hip / to who made heaven” (Lines 9-10), or says the Dead Sea Scrolls are lost for “a coupla thousand years or so” (Line 23). The use of slang and informal diction and syntax choices in the poem recreates a casual style of speech more reminiscent of oral delivery than traditional writing, which in turn complements the poem’s thematic preoccupation with the nature of storytelling and oral tradition.
