Summary Of The Poem Dinner By Billy Collins

I will be honest that I am not the best with poetry and that the simplicity of this poem attracted me because it is one of few that I can read and understand the first time. However, as I began breaking the poem down and looking into the literary aspects of it I became entranced by the mystery of this poem and I had no choice but to figure out the hidden meanings of each part. Things like the rhyme scheme and the random number of syllables in each line make it flow in an odd manner and things like that have to be representing something bigger in the poem. The obvious story of the poem is that of a very old couple who seem to be poor and eat little other than beans. They live very modestly as we can see in the first stanza where the speaker

In the second stanza the speaker tells of how the couple are good people who lived long and possibly eventful lives, yet they still continue to get up each day and get dressed and do things as it says, “Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But who keep on putting on their clothes and putting things away.” Notice how the speaker capitalizes, “Mostly Good,” even though it is at the end of a line. It is possible the speaker is trying to make a point of how the people lived their lives as good people or that they did their best to be good people throughout their lives most do. This could lead us to believe that it is another testament to the mediocrity and normality of their lives. The third stanza is about remembering their past as they eat their beans in a small rented back room. In the room they have all of their relics from the past, and each one may represent a different memory or event. They are things that the old couple is holding on to so that they can better remember the

The rhyme scheme of this poem is AABA BCDC EFDF. There is no pattern in the number of syllables in each line or stanza of this poem which means that it does not have a specific meter. The only consistency in the rhyme scheme is that the second and fourth verse of each stanza rhyme. This is a quality of a common verse poem but this poem doesn't have a specific type of rhyme scheme or an organized meter. The poem, although it has a rhyme scheme, is not as formal as a common meter. This reflects on the couple it is portraying, who do not focus on preserving formality in their daily lives. For example, they eat a casual dinner off of their plates that were once formal unchipped china. This is where he gets the term chipware from, chipware isn't a real word but it is safe to assume that he created this term for the poem to describe chipped chinaware. The lack of meter in the poem could reflect the simplicity of the couple and their straight forward lives. There are other elements within the poem that can be examined as well such as