Structure
When reading poetry, most people don't understand you can read more than just the words presented in the black and white text. The structural elements can speak volumes. Simply using poetic elements can add or elaborate on the ideas and themes throughout the piece.
For example, Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues is a collection of poetry sectioned into various choruses. Although each chorus is part of a whole, the structure and cadence of each one is distinct. Kerouac specialized in a poetic form known as spontaneity of consciousness. This style is void of editing and confounds of typical punctuation. It is supposed to depict the free form of thought. Although the controversial style is said to lack artistic merit, poetic form is still very much at play in the work of Beat Poets. Consider the 113th Chorus below:
For example, Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues is a collection of poetry sectioned into various choruses. Although each chorus is part of a whole, the structure and cadence of each one is distinct. Kerouac specialized in a poetic form known as spontaneity of consciousness. This style is void of editing and confounds of typical punctuation. It is supposed to depict the free form of thought. Although the controversial style is said to lack artistic merit, poetic form is still very much at play in the work of Beat Poets. Consider the 113th Chorus below:
Although there isn't a strict rhyming scheme, using assonance, where two vowel sounds stress a specific syllable to create a sort of echo, is used in order to maintain a verbal beat. Enjambment is used throughout the various stanzas to illustrate free flowing thought with fluidity. Even the physical way the poem is formatted makes use of white space further highlighting the theme of emptiness. Each line break and indentation of the stanzas embodies a sense of emptiness.
Structure Dictating Performance
Structural aspects suggest the ways in which the work can be performed. Watch the video below for Johnny Depp's interpretation of the structural form and the ways in which it influences his performance of the 113th Chorus.