Analysis of Graceland
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
Tomb of a millionaire,
A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
Place of the dead where they spend every year
The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars
For upkeep and flowers
To keep fresh the memory of the dead.
The merchant prince gone to dust
Commanded in his written will
Over the signed name of his last testament
Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside
For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips,
For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance
Around his last long home.
(A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night.
In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables
Drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose silver dollars in their pockets.
In a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages
And when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she is reckless about God and the newspapers and the police, the talk of her home town or the name people call her.)
Scheme | XXXAAXXXXXXXX XXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11001 01001100100 11011111001 010011011010 11010 1110100101 0101111 01001101 10011111100 10110101101 1101110 101010101010 011111 0101111011101011 0011101001101110 1011110111110100110 0010101101111111110111100110 0111101000101110011001000010110111011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 974 |
Words | 175 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 13, 5 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 43 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 389 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 86 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 52 sec read
- 112 Views
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"Graceland" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4671/graceland>.
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