Composition

Outer composition

The poem “Merry-Go-Round” by Langston Hughes has a simple and irregular outer composition. The poem has 13 verses in total, which are structured into a single stanza. The verses are of short to medium length, from three to eight syllables, with most containing five syllables. The poem is also split into five sentences that run across multiple lines in a technique called enjambment: 

Where is the Jim Crow section

On this merry-go-round,

Mister, cause I want to ride? (ll. 1-3)

The poem also has an irregular rhyme scheme, with words that occasionally rhyme with each other. For example, “ride” (l. 3) rhymes with “side” (l. 6), and “back” (l. 9) rhymes with “back” (l. 10) and “black” (l. 13). While the poem does not follow a regular rhyme...