Blacklisted
Why shall I keep the old name?What is a name anywhere anyway?A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child:A job is a job and I want to live, soWhy does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by?
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- anyway adv.
- Anywise; at all. Tennyson. Southey.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Blacklisted is in the public domain. This text is taken from Chicago Poems, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, Blacklisted, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/blacklisted.html, id L28868.
Form and metre
Blacklisted is 5 lines in a single stanza.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Why shall I keep the old name? | 7 | ······· |
| What is a name anywhere anyway? | 10 | ····/˘·/˘· |
| A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child: | 15 | ·······/˘·/˘··· |
| A job is a job and I want to live, so | 11 | ··········· |
| Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by? | 23 | ···˘/˘·/˘˘˘············ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.