Rosa Parks

“Rosa Parks” is a free verse poem, meaning it doesn’t follow a fixed rhyme-scheme or a fixed metrical pattern. Just because the poem is free verse, however, does not mean it is formless. To the contrary, there are two important formal features that organize and propel the poem: a repeating refrain and heavy use of enjambment. This form is appropriate to a poem about the civil rights movement, which wasn’t as formally or rigidly structured as a government bureaucracy. Though it was powerful, it was a looser, more tensile network. In coordination, Giovanni’s poem is not as rigid as a sonnet, but is instead propelled by more flexible literary devices.

A refrain is a phrase that repeats serially in a poem or song—most often, the repeated occurrences are identical, but sometimes refrains can shift slightly. As discussed in the “Analysis” section, “Rosa Parks” is organized by the repeating refrain, “This is for the Pullman Porters who”—a phrase that has the feel of a celebratory toast, offering the poem as a thank-you gift to those it’s praising.

About two-thirds of the way through the poem, the refrain stops focusing on the Pullman porters and instead highlights others involved in