Comment on the poetic technique used in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

This famous poem is presented as a dramatic monologue,
which is a poem in which a character speaks directly to one or more listeners. It is
important to be aware of the role that rhyme plays in constructing this poem. Although
the poem is written in free verse with irregular line lengths, there is an overall
coherence of rhyme which aids the structure.

Many of the
lines rhyme, although not all, and certain patterns of rhyme that are present in the
poem help to create a central structure. The first stanza for example has a rhyme scheme
of A, A, B, D, D, D, D, E, E, F, G, G. The music and rhythm of the poem is thus greatly
aided by the loose use of rhyme to create structure. In addition, it is important to
note how rhyme is used not just to repeat sounds but also to repeat ideas. The most
obvious example of this comes in the third stanza, when "time" is repeated to suggest
the way that various ideas and themes appear and re-appear throughout the
poem:

There
will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet
the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and
create,

And time for all the works and days of
hands

That life and drop a question on your
plate;

Time for you and time for
me,

And time yet for a hundred
indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and
revisions,

Before the taking of toast and
tea.

Here the repetition of
the word time is used to establish how indecisive J. Alfred Prufrock is, and how he
"murders and creates" different selves and ideas in his endless ruminations on how he is
regarded and viewed by others and how he can create a good impression. Thus it is that
there is always time for a "hundred indecisions" and "visions and revisions" for a man
who lives a life defered that is "measured out... with coffee
spoons."