My Father's Hats

“My Father’s Hats” is a free verse poem, meaning it has no fixed rhyme or meter.

Meter happens when a poet creates a specific pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Stressed syllables are the parts of a word that someone usually emphasizes when speaking. For example, the stress in the word Sunday falls on Sun, leaving the day unstressed.

In “My Father’s Hats,” Irwin forgoes a set number of syllables or stresses per and across lines:

                             Sunday mornings I would reach

        high into his dark closet while standing

                on a chair and tiptoeing reach (Lines 1-3)

As seen above, the lines’ number of stressed and unstressed syllables fluctuates. The stresses’ locations shift too: The first and third sounds are stressed in the first line but unstressed in the following two lines. Most of the lines’ opening sounds are unstressed. The total syllables and words per line are close but do not form any consistent pattern.

On the other hand, rhyme is when words with similar sounds are placed near each other or share the same point in their respective lines to make a sonic effect. Irwin repeats -ing words at the ends of the second, fourth, and sixth lines.