Poetry Response #4..5? AAA Vacation Guide

Hilbert’s sonnet “AAA Vacation Guide” is set up in pentamic rhythm with a rhyme scheme of abcabc defdef gg, but either done intentionally or not, the rhyme doesn’t stand out. When I read it, by the time I got to the fourth line, I had forgotten the last syllable of the first line—it had been mixed in with thirty others—and if it rhymed, well I really could not recall what it should have rhyme with anyway. I was already frustrated that the first two lines didn’t rhyme, then that the scheme was not every other line, and by the time I had gotten to the third I had given up hope. When I finally recognized the pattern (3 lines later), the words had switched and the rhymes no longer followed the outline I had grown used to. Hilbert uses this confusion to juxtapose the cliched city-and-season pairs: the ideal match (Paris in spring, New York in Autumn) with the awkward combination (Scranton in summer). His diction evokes a tone of pity for the small towns “no one wants to visit, only to leave.” The lines in the second half of the sonnet are grammatically correct sentences, but they lack the “glamour and appeal” of the fluffy, pretentious cities like New York, Paris, London, or Tokyo, and Hilbert holds a basic understanding that no other town holds a candle to them. Also, the lines don’t appear to have a set rhythm or rhyme scheme—it’s as if they are being said the way any person would mention them in relaxed conversation. Paris and New York are mentioned poetically in the first line with a season famously associated with each while the rest of the poem uses casual diction to convey that the towns are not and never will be as remarkably memorable. Hilbert uses the confusion of the “AAA Vacation Guide” sonnet’s layout to better exemplify the ordinariness of normal cities that the everyday man lives in.