At first glance, Sexton’s poem appears to be an unstructured collection of free verse stanzas. While it is true that “The Expatriates” does not strictly follow a formal metrical form, it does make use of meter and end rhyme. Sexton’s lines vary from the two-foot, four-syllable “butchered from time” (Line 31), to the seven-foot, 15-syllable “filed out in exile where we walked too alien to know” (Line 16). Sexton’s meter also varies. The opening stanza suggests an iambic rhythm, where Sexton writes “my DEAR it WAS a MOment / to CLUTCH at FOR a MOment” (Lines 1-2). Sexton uses the most conversational of meters, iambic pentameter, to give her poem a conventional metrical rhythm from which she can vary as the speaker’s emotions also shift.

Sexton gives special metrical emphasis to “barging out of the dirt to work on the air” (Line 9) by introducing to anapests over the base iambic rhythm. The phrases “OUT of the” and “WORK on the” work together to give the line a musical counterrhythm, highlighting the strangeness and expatriated nature of the trees whose roots thrust confusingly into the air.