Robert Frost1874-1963

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Carl Sandburg1878-1967

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Carl Sandburg

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Carl Sandburg

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

The Fog

The fog comeson little cat feet.

It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on. 

Carl Sandburg

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: 

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. 

Carl Sandburg

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Chicago

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities . . .

Carl Sandburg

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

The Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work--          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at GettysburgAnd pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.Shovel them under and let me work.Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:          What place is this?          Where are we now?

          I am the grass.          Let me work. 

“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love.”

“A poem is a momentary stay against confusion.”

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

“Free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

--Robert Frost

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Mending WallSomething there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Mending WallAnd some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Mending WallSpring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

After Apple PickingMy long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn't pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.I cannot rub the strangeness from my sightI got from looking through a pane of glassI skimmed this morning from the drinking troughAnd held against the world of hoary grass.It melted, and I let it fall and break.But I was wellUpon my way to sleep before it fell,And I could tellWhat form my dreaming was about to take.Magnified apples appear and disappear,Stem end and blossom end,And every fleck of russet showing clear. ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

After Apple PickingMy instep arch not only keeps the ache,It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar binThe rumbling soundOf load on load of apples coming in.For I have had too muchOf apple-picking: I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired.There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.For allThat struck the earth,No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,Went surely to the cider-apple heapAs of no worth.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

After Apple PickingOne can see what will troubleThis sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.Were he not gone,The woodchuck could say whether it's like hisLong sleep, as I describe its coming on,Or just some human sleep.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

The Road Not TakenTwo roads diverged in a yellow woodAnd sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveller, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claimBecause it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally layIn leaves no feet had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry