Carl Sandburg's Soup

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Carl Sandburg’s Poem, Soup, may appear as only a simple poem about a man eating soup, but that is not the case. After a more in depth analysis, it is easy to see there is much more to the poem. Not only more to the words and the meaning behind them, but also to the structure and language of the poem. Soup may only have nine lines, but it is easy to figure out its statement; the rich and famous are just ordinary people who do ordinary things.
Sandburg’s illustration in the poem through his words is very easy to imagine. He starts the poem with the speaker introducing a man. “I saw a famous man eating soup” (1). The speaker goes on to talk about what he sees this man doing, eating soup. He then states, “His name was in the newspapers that day / Spelled out in tall black headlines” (4-5). By saying this, the speaker is further …show more content…

There are only four full sentences and one coma. The first line is a complete sentence. The second and third are another, then the fourth, fifth and sixth make up one. There is a paragraph break following line six, and the seventh line begins indented. The final three lines make up the last sentence. Sandburg does not use much punctuation at all, and this helps the reader easily flow through the poem without taking huge pauses. Soup is not a hard poem to understand or interpret. Carl Sandburg got straight to the point, and didn't leave much to interpretation. Not only is the poem easy to dad, but it's also easy to understand why the tittle is Soup, it's what the whole poem is based around.
Just as he did with the rest of the poem, Sandburg kept the language simple. The words that stand out are the action words, because they really help paint the picture. Instead of simply saying the man was eating soup, Sandburg instead used this sentence; “I say he was lifting a fat broth / into his mouth with a spoon” (2-3). By saying fat broth instead of soup, it is easier to picture just what this man is

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