Carl Sandburg, numbers 2-11 poems

poems numbers 2-11

02 Under a Telephone Pole
I am a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing-humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want,
Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech,
In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying,
A copper wire.

03 Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

04 Flux
Sand of the sea runs red
Where the sunset reaches and quivers.
Sand of the sea runs yellow
Where the moon slants and wavers.

05 Monotone
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful-
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.

06 Back Yard
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
An Italian boy is sending songs to you tonight from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl;
They marry next month;
tonight they are throwing you kisses.
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen
That sits in a cherry tree in his back yard.
The clocks say I must go-
I stay here sitting on the back porch
drinking white thoughts you rain down.
Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

07 Child Moon
The child’s wonder
At the old moon
Comes back nightly.
She points her finger
To the far silent yellow thing
Shining through the branches
Filtering on the leaves a golden sand,
Crying with her little tongue, “See the moon!”
And in her bed fading to sleep
With babblings of the moon on her little mouth.

08 Docks
Strolling along
By the teeming docks,
I watch the ships put out.
Black ships that heave and lunge
And move like mastodons
Arising from lethargic sleep.
The fathomed harbor
Calls them not nor dares
Them to a strain of action,
But outward, on and outward,
Sounding low-reverberating calls,
Shaggy in the half-lit distance,
They pass the pointed headland,
View the wide, far-lifting wilderness
And leap with cumulative speed
To test the challenge of the sea.
Plunging,
Doggedly onward plunging,
Into salt and mist and foam and sun.

09 Lost
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor’s breast
And the harbor’s eyes.

10 Margaret
Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.
In your blue eyes, O reckless child,
I saw today many little wild wishes,
Eager as the great morning.

11 Window
Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.

Carl Sandburg, numbers 2-11. This poet was born in 1878.

Look at the word monotone in poem 5. The rain is monotone and is being contrasted with a rainbow which has lots of colors. What does monotone mean? The prefix mono means one. This man is wearing a monocle.

Look at the word catalpa in poem 6. I don’t know what it is. Do you? But the poem gives us clues. It says, “grass, catalpa and oak.” We know what grass is. Oak is referring to the tree. So we can assume catalpa is some sort of plant. 

This is a mastodon in poem 8. How would you imagine a mastodon moves?

Write what you think is the definition of each of the words you wrote in your notebook.

Look the words up to find their definitions. If you were not correct, please add the correct definition to your notebook.

Choose two poems and write what each poem is talking about in your own words. Label your answer with the number and title of the poem.