No Rhyme or Reason: A Poetic Lament on Violence

Abstract

This essay spins off the many versions of “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.” This children’s song plays with rhyme to tell the story of an old woman who dies after consuming increasingly large animals to rid herself of the previously swallowed one. Revisiting the lyrics, the violence, with its lulling repetition and rhyme, enacted by the old woman was unsettling, another of so many cultural phenomena that deaden our response to violence. This piece calls upon poetic inquiry to explore the rampant violence in U.S. culture.