“A Brave and Startling Truth” is a 78-line free verse poem made up of 11 stanzas of varying length. The poem does not use a formal structure, and can be read as a long, continuous sentence. The only punctuation is the period at the very end of the poem: “We come to it” (Line 78), even though some stanzas end on natural sentence breaks while others are intentionally enjambed, or connected in syntax and meaning to the following line that opens the next stanza.

Stanzas range from five lines to 11 lines, and individual lines range from five syllables to 19 syllables long. This gives the poem a conversational, colloquial quality while still retaining the ability to lend additional emphasis to certain phrases or ideas. The poem does not use a traditional rhyme scheme, but uses instances of consonance and assonance to convey a feeling of rhythm.

Anaphora is the stylistic repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive sections of a poem. “A Brave and Startling Truth” uses the word “When” to open many lines, with the phrase “When we come to it” appearing seven times across the poem.