Question

Read the poem “Birmingham Sunday” by Richard Fariña and complete the instruction that follows.

Answer 1

Answer:

"Birmingham Sunday" was written as a song and is in the form of a broadside ballad. The structure was formed in part to match the old Scottish folk song "I Once Loved a Lass." I think Fariña may have chosen to use an old melody because he wanted the message to be the main focus of the song. The familiarity of the melody meant that people may have been able to sing along, so all they needed to do was to learn the words. The song has a pattern, which is broken occasionally. The main pattern for syllables in a stanza is 11, 11, 11, and 10. However, Fariña occasionally breaks from this pattern, almost as if stressing particular messages. The first break is in line 7: "At an old Baptist church there was no need to run." This line is 12 syllables instead of the usual 11. The line is also heavy with irony, so it could be that Fariña wanted to emphasize its irony and foreshadow what will happen. The second break is in line 17: "And the number her killers had given was four," referring to Carol Robertson. It is possible that this line was given an extra syllable (12 instead of 11) to emphasize Carol, who was the last victim mentioned in the song. The syllable pattern does not break again until line 30: "And I can't do much more than to sing you a song." This could be to emphasize the helplessness that some felt as a result of the injustice. The song also utilized end rhyme. Using letters to represent end rhymes, most stanzas (except the first) looked like this: AAAB. It is interesting that the first stanza starts off not following this pattern. Instead, it follows a rhyme pattern of AABC. The "B" that seems out of place happens to be the powerful line, "On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine." Perhaps Fariña wanted to keep this line, which utilizes figurative language to hint at the destruction, the topic of the song.

Explanation: