Summer Stars
Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.
~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Smoke and Steel, 1920
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Carl Sandburg biography
NJCHCI, Summer Stars above St. Suvorova, 2013. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Carl Sandburg is my favorite poet at this time.
ReplyDeleteOutstanding poem...
ReplyDeleteI notice epistrophe being employed here... the word 'stars' being repeated at the end of some lines. Also, anaphora... the phrase 'so near' repeated at the beginning of some lines. I think that Carl Sandburg wishes he could pluck stars from the summer night sky. 💟💟💟💟💟💟
ReplyDeleteYou've taught me a new term, Cathleen Harvea Guthrie. "Epistrophe" is a good name for a technique every poet should be aware of. It combines two important principles:
ReplyDelete(1) Repetition is the most effective way of linking ideas, phrases, or whole lines, even more so than perfect rhyme. It's an easy technique to pick up, and can be so effective, that writers need to learn to limit their use of it; unvarying repetition can easily turn monotonous, and using a word repeatedly robs it of some of its power each time, turning it with overuse into mere filler.
(2) The end of a line gets the most attention; while the eyes move back to the left side of the page, the last word stays in the mind a bit longer than normal. That's an important consideration for free verse poets deciding where to break their lines.