Analysis of Balloon Faces
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
The Balloons hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens.
They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky.
Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, “What shall we eat?”—and the waiters, “Have you ordered?” they are sixty balloon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smartalecks discussing “educated jackasses,” here they put crabs into their balloon faces.
Here sit the heavy balloon face women lifting crimson lobsters into their crimson faces, lobsters out of Saragossa sea bottoms.
Here sits a man cross-examining a woman, “Where were you last night? What do you do with all your money? Who’s buying your shoes now, anyhow?”
So they sit eating whitefish, two balloon faces swept on God’s night wind.
And all the time the balloon spots on the wires, a little mile of festoons, they play their own silence play of film yellow and film gold, bubble blue and bubble red.
The wind crosses the town, the wind from the west side comes to the banks of marigolds boxed in the Marigold Gardens.
Night moths fly and fix their feet in the leaves and eat and are seen by the eaters.
The jazz outfit sweats and the drums and the saxophones reach for the ears of the eaters.
The chorus brought from Broadway works at the fun and the slouch of their shoulders, the kick of their ankles, reach for the eyes of the eaters.
These girls from Kokomo and Peoria, these hungry girls, since they are paid-for, let us look on and listen, let us get their number.
Why do I go again to the balloons on the wires, something for nothing, kin women of the half-moon, dream women?
And the half-moon swinging on the wind crossing the town—these two, the half-moon and the wind—this will be about all, this will be about all.
Eaters, go to it; your mazuma pays for it all; it’s a knockout, a classy knockout—and payday always comes.
Scheme | AXAXBXXXACCCX XX B |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0011110001010 1111001110110111110101101 0111011101001110111100101110111001101011001 10101110101010100111110110110 1101001110101010011101010111110 1101101000101011111111111011011110 1111011011011111 010100111010010111111110111100111010101 01100101101111011101001010 1110111001010111010 0111001001011011010 0101111101001111001111011011010 11110001001101111111111010111110 11110110011010101101101011110 001110101100111011001111011111011 1011111111110101010111 |
Characters | 1,953 |
Words | 349 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 13, 2, 1 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 95 |
Words per line (avg) | 21 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 505 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 114 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:44 min read
- 61 Views
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"Balloon Faces" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4617/balloon-faces>.
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