Who Am I?
My head knocks against the stars.My feet are on the hilltops.My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.I have been to hell and back many times.I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.I know the passionate seizure of beautyAnd the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off."
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Words in this poem
- primal a.
- First; primary; original; chief. [LL. primalis, fr. L. primus the first. See Prime, a.]
- elusive a.
- Tending to elude; using arts or deception to escape; adroitly escaping or evading; eluding the grasp; fallacious.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Who Am I? 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, Who Am I?, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/who-am-i.html, id L28936.
Form and metre
Who Am I? is 10 lines in 2 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My head knocks against the stars. | 7 | ······· |
| My feet are on the hilltops. | 7 | ·····/· |
| My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life. | 17 | ·/˘····/˘····˘/˘· |
| Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny. | 23 | ···/˘··/˘········/˘·/˘˘ |
| I have been to hell and back many times. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God. | 13 | ·····/˘······ |
| I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible. | 13 | ·/˘·······/˘˘ |
| I know the passionate seizure of beauty | 11 | ···/˘˘/˘·/˘ |
| And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading "Keep Off." | 17 | ··/˘˘˘/˘·····/˘·· |
| My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe. | 19 | ·········˘/˘/˘··/˘· |
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.