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Plath wrote “Daddy” in free verse, which means the poem doesn’t follow a rigid metrical scheme. Indeed, the meter is so consistently irregular throughout the poem that individual lines range between two and thirteen syllables. But despite the wide range of different lengths, most lines in the poem have between seven and nine syllables. This average gives the poem an overall sense of steadiness, which is made palpable in the fact that almost all the lines in the poem have either three or four beats. As an example, consider the opening stanza (lines 1–5):

     You do not do, you do not do
     A-ny more, black shoe
     In which I have lived like a foot
     For thir-ty years, poor and white,
     Bare-ly dar-ing to breathe or A-choo.

Every line in this stanza has a different sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, yet all but the middle line contain the same number of stressed syllables. Thus, despite the great degree of metrical variation among the individual lines, the similar number of stressed syllables per line establishes a general unity of rhythm.

Elsewhere in the poem, Plath pursues different effects through different metrical strategies. At times, she creates a sense of flow by approximating similar rhythmic patterns across multiple lines, as in lines 11–12:

     And a head in the freak-ish At-lan-tic
     Where it pours bean green o-ver blue

These lines don’t share the same exact sequence of unstressed and stressed syllables. However, they both make significant use the metrical foot known as an anapest (unstressed–unstressed–stressed), which creates a consistent galloping rhythm. At other times, Plath uses very dissimilar rhythms to modulate the pace of the poem, as in lines 16–18:

     In the Ger-man tongue, in the Pol-ish town
     Scraped flat by the roll-er
     Of wars, wars, wars.

Each of these lines has a different number of stressed syllables, which creates a shifting rhythmic profile. In particular, note how the language slows way down in the final line, where three stressed beats appear without any unstressed syllables to intervene. Plath uses these and other strategies throughout “Daddy” to create a rich—and sometimes dense—rhythmic texture.

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