Jungheimer's
In western fields of corn and northern timber lands,They talk about me, a saloon with a soul,The soft red lights, the long curving bar,The leather seats and dim corners,Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham,And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of booze and riots.
Words in this poem
- nigger n.
- A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Jungheimer's 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, Jungheimer's, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/jungheimers.html, id L28971.
Form and metre
Jungheimer's is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In western fields of corn and northern timber lands, | 12 | ·/˘····/˘/˘· |
| They talk about me, a saloon with a soul, | 11 | ······˘/··· |
| The soft red lights, the long curving bar, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| The leather seats and dim corners, | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of booze and riots. | 26 | ··/˘··/˘···/˘˘/·········/˘ |
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.