Band Concert
Band concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.
Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers daffy with life's razzle dazzle.
Slow good-night melodies and Home Sweet Home. And the snare drummer bookkeeper in a hardware store nods hello to the daughter of a railroad conductor—a giggler, God knows, a giggler—and the summer-white dresses filter fanwise out of the public square.
The crushed strawberries of ice cream soda places, the night wind in cottonwoods and willows, the lattice shadows of doorsteps and porches, these know more of the story.
Words in this poem
- cowboy n.
- A cattle herder; a drover; specifically, one of an adventurous class of herders and drovers on the plains of the Western and Southwestern United States.
- nigger n.
- A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation.
- cornfield n.
- A field where corn is or has been growing; -- in England, a field of wheat, rye, barley, or oats; in America, a field of Indian corn.
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- dazzle v. t.
- To overpower with light; to confuse the sight of by brilliance of light. [Freq. of daze.]
- drummer n.
- One whose office is to best the drum, as in military exercises and marching.
- bookkeeper n.
- One who keeps accounts; one who has the charge of keeping the books and accounts in an office.
- hardware n.
- Ware made of metal, as cutlery, kitchen utensils, and the like; ironmongery.
- giggler n.
- One who giggles or titters.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Band Concert is in the public domain. This text is taken from Cornhuskers, 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, Band Concert, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/band-concert.html, id L29009.
Form and metre
Band Concert is 4 lines in 4 stanzas of 1 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Band concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues. | 58 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘/˘/˘·/˘˘/˘/˘·/˘/˘······/˘/˘·······/˘˘·/˘···/˘˘/˘· |
| Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers daffy with life's razzle dazzle. | 60 | /···/˘···/˘/˘/˘··/·/˘····/˘/˘·/˘˘/·˘/˘/···/˘········/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Slow good-night melodies and Home Sweet Home. And the snare drummer bookkeeper in a hardware store nods hello to the daughter of a railroad conductor—a giggler, God knows, a giggler—and the summer-white dresses filter fanwise out of the public square. | 62 | ···/˘˘·······/˘/·˘··/···˘/··/˘··/·˘/˘·/˘···/˘··/˘·/˘/˘·····/˘· |
| The crushed strawberries of ice cream soda places, the night wind in cottonwoods and willows, the lattice shadows of doorsteps and porches, these know more of the story. | 40 | ··/·˘···/˘/˘····/˘··/··/˘/··/··/˘·····/˘ |
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.