"The images in the poem move from the universal to the specific, so that from out of the millions of nameless, faceless Americans one figure in particular emerges: the immigrant. This is where “One Today” does something very interesting: it shows us the exact point at which the story of the immigrant experience intersects with the myth of the American Dream." "Over the course of its nine stanzas (69 lines), “One Today” offers a sweeping view of America during a single day, from sunrise to sunset. The first stanza links geographically diverse areas of the country through the image of the rising sun:" The incipit is strongly alliterative. Almost each word recalls the following by
assonance . A sort of raffinate anagrammatic playing, highlights "us" which is contained in the word "sun" and "rose" which is contained in "shores". The anaphoric "One" of the first and fifth line, emphasizes the diurnal light growing in intensity. The poem is characterised by a musical harmony given by the employment of figures of sound such as
alliteration, assonance,
paromoiosis, and several
onomatopoeic words such as "slide", "whistling", "brush". The style is mostly
nominal and where the lyrical discourse proceeds for
asyndeton the speed of the rhythm creates breathtaking poetic-narrative sequences. On the other hand the employment of
prepositions,
deixis, particularly spatial deixis, makes images plastic and visual. ==See also==