The Hamlet Project

Wait. What’s he saying here?
Is he saying what I was saying before?
That any murder is most foul?
But especially this one?
Which, now, in additon to being foul and unnatural,
Has also become strange.
I don’t know anything about rhetoric
Or rhetorical patterns but I am
Interested in the pattern of
Most unnatural
Most foul
Most foul
Foul and unnatural murder
Murder most foul
Most foul, strange and unnatural.
It makes me think of a sestina –
The way the words rearrange
And shift over the course of the repetition.
The only sestina I can call to mind
Is this one by Elizabeth Bishop
Which features a gasoline can, I think.
I can remember none of the words
(exept perhaps esso s-o-esso?)
but I remember the feeling of the poem
nostalgic and tactile and it makes me
long for something old and rusty that I never really knew.
This sentence of the ghost’s feels like it’s like that –
Really just a repetition of words
Where the meaning isn’t nearly so significant as the feeling.