Some Days

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Some Days” is a free verse poem with five stanzas. Each stanza is a quatrain, meaning there are four lines in every stanza of the poem. Although there is no defined rhyme scheme, the quatrains add uniformity to the poem. This mirrors the human homogeny elicited from society that the poem highlights. For the first three stanzas of the poem, each exists as a sentence: The first three lines of each stanza are enjambed—meaning they lack end-stop punctuation and flow to the next line—and these stanzas all end with periods in the fourth line. Although Collins uses enjambment, he also places commas at the ends of the first three lines, offering a slight pause before the reader moves to the following line. This slows the reading and draws out the poem in a slower cadence. It isn’t rushed or fast-paced. Instead, the pacing mirrors the mundanity and sluggish pace of the “dollhouse” (Line 11) scene.

The final two stanzas equate to an eight-line question, as there is no end-stop punctuation until the question mark at the end of the final line. The fourth stanza has no punctuation at all—and is the only stanza sans punctuation in the whole poem. This deliberate lack of punctuation focuses attention here: This is where Collins shifts the perspective of the speaker from first to second, and begins asking the audience to consider how they feel about ideas of control and free will.

Metaphor

A metaphor equates two things in symbolic comparison. In this case, the speaker of the poem equates people in society with dolls living in of a dollhouse. This metaphor is extended, as it is drawn out through the entirety of the poem. From the very beginning, the speaker does not refer to those they control as dolls, but instead refers to them as “people” (Line 1). The only two indications at the beginning of the poem that the “people” (Line 1) are actually dolls are the words “feature” (Line 3) as the speaker describes his ability to “bend their legs” (Line 2), and “tiny” (Line 4) when describing the “wooden chairs” (Line 4). The metaphor becomes apparent when the speaker becomes one of the dolls “lifted up by the ribs […] to sit with the others” (Lines 10 and 12). Suddenly, it’s not the speaker playing puppeteer but something much larger at play. The speaker is simply one of the “people” (Line 1) and only playing “god” (Line 17) as some omniscient force allows—much like any individual living with the pressures, hierarchy, requirements, and rules of society.

Point of View

In the first three stanzas, this poem is narrated by the speaker in first person. They begin by describing how they “put the people in their places at the table” (Line 1) and that the “people” (Line 1) are “perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved” (Line 8). While describing the “people” (Line 1) as “motionless” (Line 8) is objective, describing them as “perfectly behaved” (Line 8) is subjective. The speaker subtly injects their opinion here.

In the fourth stanza, the perspective shifts to second person for the rest of the poem, indicated by the use of the word “you” (Lines 14, 15, 16). They continue this by asking, “how would you like it / if you never knew from one day to the next / if you were going to spend it / striding around like a vivid god […] or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper” (Lines 14-19). While the speaker is addressing the audience, the “you” (Lines 14, 15, 16) is ambiguous enough that it can be read as addressing humanity in general. The speaker directing his attention to the audience evokes pathos in the forms of sympathy and camaraderie. This direct address asks the reader to consider not only the plight of the speaker and their “dolls,” but that of all humanity unable to actually exert their own will.