Fight
Red drips from my chin where I have been eating.Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth.
Clots of red mess my hairAnd the tiger, the buffalo, know how.
I was a killer.Yes, I am a killer.
I come from killing.I go to more.I drive red joy ahead of me from killing.Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices of my inside bones:The child cries for a suck mother and I cry for war.
Words in this poem
- nowhere adv.
- Not anywhere; not in any place or state; as, the book is nowhere to be found. [AS. nahwær. See No, and Where.]
- ahead adv.
- In or to the front; in advance; onward. [Pref. a- + head.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fight 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, Fight, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/fight.html, id L28921.
Form and metre
Fight is 11 lines in 4 stanzas.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 3 AA killerA · killerA
- 4 ABA-B killingA · moreB · killingA · bones · warB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Red drips from my chin where I have been eating. | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth. | 13 | ····/········ |
| Clots of red mess my hair | 6 | ······ |
| And the tiger, the buffalo, know how. | 10 | ··/˘·/˘··· |
| I was a killer. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Yes, I am a killer. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| I come from killing. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| I go to more. | 4 | ···· |
| I drive red joy ahead of me from killing. | 11 | ····˘/···/˘ |
| Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices of my inside bones: | 18 | ····/˘·····/˘··˘/· |
| The child cries for a suck mother and I cry for war. | 13 | ······/˘····· |
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.