Analysis of A Tall Man
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
The mouth of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.
The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.
The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians.
The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans,
Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown.
The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton belt,
Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wilderness
Or huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof.
Brother mystery to man and mob mystery,
Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands,
He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people.
The heart of him the red drops of the people,
The wish of him the steady gray-eagle crag-hunting flights of the people.
Humble dust of a wheel-worn road,
Slashed sod under the iron-shining plow,
These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and the Isthmus, between the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd.
The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the many and the left wrist wisdom of the many.
It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many.
Scheme | XA BBXXXX CXDDD XXACC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111110111 0111110111 01111111010100010 01111110111010 111101001 011111111010110011001111101 1001010110100 110010101101101 101001101100 1010110101 11100111111111011010 01110111010 011101011011011010 10110111 1110010101 111001101010101010100101000100101000101011100101110011 0101110010111110111010100011101010 1101011011101010 |
Characters | 1,243 |
Words | 239 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 6, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 54 |
Words per line (avg) | 13 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 245 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 176 Views
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"A Tall Man" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4592/a-tall-man>.
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