Analysis of Buttons
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—are shoved back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?
Scheme | AX XXBB XXA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111001111110001101010 1010101010110111010101 0101110110 1010101110001 011001010111 0100101010110111 110101111100011010101 1011101101101011 11111111110111011101101010101011111011 |
Characters | 735 |
Words | 134 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 9 |
Letters per line (avg) | 64 |
Words per line (avg) | 15 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 191 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 40 sec read
- 220 Views
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"Buttons" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4633/buttons>.
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