Selling Manhattan

The form of “Selling Manhattan” appears to frustrate definition, much less analysis. The poem is divided into seven irregular stanzas. Most are quintains, or stanzas with five lines, but the poem opens with a quatrain (four lines) set in italics to mark it as the interior thoughts of the Dutch settlers; there is also a stanza with a single line; and the poem closes with a tercet, a stanza with three lines. Each of the stanzas closes with an end-punctuation, although within each quintain are examples of enjambment, that is, a line that does not close with a comma or a period and thus moves directly into the next line.

Thus, the form seems formless. But that appears to be the point. Abandoning as predictive and intrusive the percussive beat of rhythm and the insistent sonic impact of rhyme, the poem captures a feeling of collision in its form that, in turn, suggests the collision of the cultures that is at the heart of the negotiation for Manhattan.

In addition, the carefully-choreographed open form allows the recitation to fit the growing bleakness of the poem. In many ways, the poem is an elegy for the earth itself.