“Toy Boat” is a free verse poem, meaning it doesn’t follow a fixed rhyme-scheme or a fixed metrical pattern. Just because the poem is free verse, however, does not mean that it is formless. To the contrary, there are two important formal features that organize “Toy Boat.”

First, while “Toy Boat” is 28 lines long, it is only 70 words for a total of 87 syllables. By comparison, a traditional double sonnet (also 28 lines long) written in iambic pentameter would have a total of 280 syllables. So, although Vuong’s poem isn’t technically a short poem in terms of the number of lines it has, the lines of “Toy Boat” are all extremely short: five lines are one word long (Lines 7, 17, 21, 22, and 24); eight lines are two words long (Lines 1, 2, 10, 13, 15, 18, 26, and 27); ten lines are three words long (Lines 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 25); and no line is more than four words long. These short lines give the poem a feeling of brevity and concision, which fits with the content. “Toy Boat” examines a minute toy—far smaller than a real boat.