On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City

“On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City” is written in unrhymed free verse organized into nine quatrains and a single concluding line. Though it does not follow a set formal metrical pattern, most of the lines feature the unstressed/stressed paired syllables of iambic feet and sounds like conversational English. This pairs with the content of the poem—the speaker is telling a story.

Enjambment in the poem also contributes to the sense that the poem flows naturally like a thought pattern, as the speaker’s inner monologue continues from the end of one quatrain to the next. Adding to this effect, pauses in thought and in spoken words are scattered throughout stanzas.

The gaps also work to create spaces for juxtaposition and irony. In the last line of the opening stanza the other passenger “…points out the window past me” (Line 4). The next quatrain picks up the thought, “into what she has been taught” (Line 5). The shift takes the literal action of pointing out the window at scenery and moves it into questions about landscape, history,