In a Back Alley
Remembrance for a great man is this.The newsies are pitching pennies.And on the copper disk is the man's face.Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?
About this text
In a Back Alley 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, In a Back Alley, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/in-a-back-alley.html, id L28886.
Form and metre
In a Back Alley 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Remembrance for a great man is this. | 9 | ˘/˘······ |
| The newsies are pitching pennies. | 8 | ·/˘·/˘/˘ |
| And on the copper disk is the man's face. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now? | 11 | ·/˘········ |
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.