The United States Welcomes You

“The United States Welcomes You” is a pseudo-sonnet, or false sonnet. This means it only follows some of the rules of the sonnet form. While Smith uses some internal rhyming (rhymes within lines), like “afraid” and “invade” in Line 10, she does not follow the strict end rhyme schemes that famous sonneteers like Petrarch and Shakespeare used. Like both Italian and English sonnets, Smith’s poem has 14 lines. Her use of the last two lines resembles the Shakespearean sonnet structure where the final couplet (a two-lined stanza) is a commentary on what occurred in the rest of the poem.

Smith’s lines follow what is called a loose pentameter. This is around ten syllables per line, with some lines following an unstressed-stressed pattern (iambic meter) in the syllables. For example, Line 3 follows strict iambic pentameter: “Why this | dancing? | Why do | your dark | bodies.” However, other lines deviate from this formal constraint of the English sonnet. Some examples include Line 1 containing only nine syllables, and Line 4 containing 11 syllables. These deviate from the 10 syllables needed for strict iambic pentameter.