Singing Nigger
Your bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,The dome and the wings of you, nigger,The red roof and the door of you,I know where your songs came from.I know why God listens to your, "Walk All Over God's Heaven."I heard you shooting craps, "My baby's going to have a new dress."I heard you in the cinders, "I'm going to live anyhow until I die."I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you harmonizing six ways to sing, "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield."I went away asking where I come from.
Words in this poem
- wheelbarrow n.
- A light vehicle for conveying small loads. It has two handles and one wheel, and is rolled by a single person.
- nigger n.
- A negro; -- in vulgar derision or depreciation.
- craps n.
- A gambling game with dice. [Local, U.S.]
- anyhow adv.
- In any way or manner whatever; at any rate; in any event.
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
- 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.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Singing Nigger 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, Singing Nigger, in Cornhuskers (1918), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-cornhuskers/singing-nigger.html, id L29032.
Form and metre
Singing Nigger is 10 lines in a single stanza. 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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ----A----A walloper · handlers · nigger · you · fromA · heaven · dress · die · cornfield · fromA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Your bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper, | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers, | 10 | ·/˘··/·˘/˘ |
| The dome and the wings of you, nigger, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| The red roof and the door of you, | 8 | ········ |
| I know where your songs came from. | 7 | ······· |
| I know why God listens to your, "Walk All Over God's Heaven." | 15 | ····/˘·······/˘ |
| I heard you shooting craps, "My baby's going to have a new dress." | 16 | ···/˘··/˘/˘····· |
| I heard you in the cinders, "I'm going to live anyhow until I die." | 19 | ·····/˘·/˘··/˘····· |
| I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you harmonizing six ways to sing, "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield." | 40 | ············/˘···/˘·····/˘·˘······/˘··/· |
| I went away asking where I come from. | 10 | ··˘//˘···· |
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.