Letters to Dead Imagists
Emily Dickinson:You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul,The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks,And how God plays around a back yard garden.
Stevie Crane:War is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till you came;Nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out of the sea,Nor the mumblings and shots that rise from dreams on call.
Words in this poem
- bumble n.
- The bittern. [Local, Eng.] [See Bump to boom.]
- shots n.
- The refuse of cattle taken from a drove.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Letters to Dead Imagists 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, Letters to Dead Imagists, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/letters-to-dead-imagists.html, id L28989.
Form and metre
Letters to Dead Imagists is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Emily Dickinson: | 6 | /˘˘/˘˘ |
| You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks, | 14 | ··˘/˘/˘˘···/˘· |
| And how God plays around a back yard garden. | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Stevie Crane: | 3 | /˘· |
| War is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till you came; | 16 | ·····/˘··/˘····· |
| Nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out of the sea, | 16 | ···/˘·/˘········ |
| Nor the mumblings and shots that rise from dreams on call. | 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.