The Fuzz in the can of Beats

Steve Kowit's "The Grammar Lesson" uses villanelle form to mimic the sound of a grammar lesson to a young learner. The repetition of the lines in the villanelle form create this confusing circular pattern of speech that hardly explains how "a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does" at all, despite the poem's being called a "lesson." The first line and the last line of the first stanza repeat in calculated places throughout the poem; however, the repetition of these same lines in other contexts in the poem creates this overcomplicated jumble of a "grammar lesson" within the poem. In this way, the poem itself rolls like a can. Adding to this garbled effect are the puns and sound play working within the poem. The speaker defines "a can" as a noun but then says "A can can roll," switching the form of the word can to a verb rather than a noun. Another pun is that "filled isn't a full verb," which sounds counterintuitive until one realizes that "filled" must follow a helping verb. These puns mark all of inconsistancies at work within the language that make saying, "Just memorize these rules," seem totally ridiculous. The speaker also uses sound devices to give the poem its dizzying rolling effect. In "'Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz,'" Kowit uses assonance sounds in "is filled with" and in "purple fuzz." Kowit also uses alliteration with "filled" and "fuzz." All of these repeating sounds within this line roll together like fizz together as if they did fill a rolling can. A "can of beets" could also be a pun playing on "beats," referring to the poem lesson as a can of beats that results from the mixing of all of these sounds. In this way, the poem expresses all of the linguistic complications left misrepresented in simply saying, "A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does."