Choose
The single clenched fist lifted and ready,Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.Choose:For we meet by one or the other.
About this text
Choose 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, Choose, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/choose.html, id L28908.
Form and metre
Choose is 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The single clenched fist lifted and ready, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. | 12 | ··/˘/˘····/˘ |
| Choose: | 1 | · |
| For we meet by one or the other. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
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.