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
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explaining to the readers how famous this man actually is. The speakers tone throughout the poem appears to be casual, but he also is shocked to see such a famous person doing a normal thing. The poem finishes with the speaker further explaining how this man is actually just a normal guy. “He sat bending his head over a plate / Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon” (8-9). These two phrases are great examples of Sandburg's use of words to create a picture. The man is not just eating soup, he is bent over, using a spoon to eat it in public. By using words and phrases such as these in his poem, Sandburg imagery is extremely easy to picture. In structural terms, Soup is not a traditional poem. It has nine lines, a group of six and a group of three. The length of each line varies and other than the first two lines, there is no syllable pattern or meter. This form goes with the poem itself, because it is not a traditional poem. It's simply a poem talking about a man eating soup, while also having a deeper meaning behind it. The movement of the poem is very smooth. Starting with the introduction of the famous man, then moving from there to explain how famous this man actually is, and circling back to the man himself sitting down eating soup. The punctuation is not traditional either.
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
doing. Soup has no rhyme scheme, and therefor it isn't quite as appealing to the ears as other poems may be. It tells a simple story of a man eating his soup, while also explaining to the readers that famous people are normal too. The speaker talks about how this man is all over the press and has thousands of fans, yet when he sees the man, he is simply eating soup. Sandburg shows his audience that you should not judge someone or expect them to be different or better based on their lifestyle and their publicity. Soup is a poem in which through its structural set up, lack of punctuation, and incredible use of language to paint an imagine, is easy to read, understand, and appreciate.
A brief summary of this poem is a man is being swallowed by a snake (The Boa Constrictor). He is describing each part of his body being eaten, but he is doing this in a funny entertaining way (The Boa Constrictor). There is no specific setting of the poem (The Boa Constrictor). The audience of this poem is intended to be towards a young group (The Boa Constrictor). Imagery can be seen in depicting a boa constrictor eating a man as he is talking about being eaten by the snake (The Boa Constrictor). The tone of this poem is a little bit of distress because he is being swallowed by a snake (The Boa Constrictor). The structure of the poem includes internal rhyme (The Boa Constrictor). Some examples would be “Oh, I'm being eaten By a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor” that is an example of free verse (The Boa Constrictor). Also an example of internal rhyme would be “Oh, gee, It’s up to my knee.”(The Boa Constrictor). The assonance shown in this poem would be no toe, gee knee, fiddle middle, pest chest, heck neck and those are the uses of assonance (The Boa Constrictor). The theme is that Shel Silverstein is turning what could be a tragic incident in real life, but making it funny and entertaining for the reader (The Boa Constrictor). I remember this poem from a very young age and I have always enjoyed reading this poem, and many more of Shel Silverstein's poem (The Boa Constrictor). To sum it up, this is a very funny poem that Silverstein uses to show many different stories, and he continues to do the same through many of his
The first aspect of language, which he uses is metaphor in the beginning of the poem when he is describing the dwarf sitting outside the church. He uses metaphor as he says, “The dwarf with his hands on backwards Sat, slumped like a half – filled sack On tiny twisted legs from which Sawdust might run.” The metaphor here of the dwarf sitting like a ‘half filled sack’ is describing the dwarf and how he has a deformed body. He is being compared to looking like a sack, which is slumped and half empty. This is effective as it seems as though the dwarf cannot help himself
The poem told the story of a man who is inhibited by language, and has never quite had the ability to articulate his thoughts and feeling through words. It is said that his family members have tried
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
Organization is a key element in Frazier's and Oliver's work, as it works directly to set the tone, as well as acting as a symbol of nature. Charles Frazier writes in long, descriptive sentences and paragraphs. These, along with the carefully chosen words in the smooth sentences, create a relaxing, peaceful tone and feel to the story. This tone reflects on the symbolic part of structure; that nature works in smooth, careful ways; everything is planned. On the other hand, Oliver writes in broken, choppy sentences, often breaking in the middle and resuming the next line down. This makes for a mysterious, erratic tone towards nature, as well as the blue heron. The blue heron, in this poem, acts rigidly and harshly in movement (as reflected by the short, fragmented sentences), while in Cold Mountain, the heron is smooth and graceful. Punctuation also adds to tone with respect to the blue heron. In Cold Mountain, the paragraphs often end in ways such as "after a deep reflection..." and "coming up short...." These rounds out the passages, allowing them to come to a gradual close instead of short, abrupt finishes to the sentences. This affects the tone of the passage as well as relates to the author's attitude towards the heron. In this passage, the heron moves slowly and steadily, with no abrupt motions, leading to a smooth and constant tone. However, the poem ends all sentences with a...
The death of one has a ripple effects in that it can emotionally kill the fallen’s loved ones. The living is left with a blurred emotion between darkness and a desperate need to recapture what was once lost. In the play A Bowl of Soup by Eric Lane, brother Robbie mourn the death of his significant other. While Eddie attempts to reconnect his brother with reality. Ultimately, Lane utilizes the two’s relationship to symbolize the unrested turmoil within the gay community.
... is shown moreover through these pauses. We also see that he places question marks at the end of sentences, which is another way he is showing us the uncertainty in the voice of society. Through his punctuation and word placement, we clearly see the voice of society in his poem, but in a way that tells us not to conform to it.
Humor and Irony are a unique combinations Collins displays in many of his poems, challenging the readers to interpret his work in different perspectives. In “Introduction to Poetry,” Collins offers a witty comparison between the definition of poetry and various other experiments. He asks the reader to “hold [the poem] up to the light/ like a color slide” (1-3), “press an ear against its hive” (4), “drop a mouse into a poem” (5), “walk inside the poem's room” (7), and “waterski across the surface of a poem” (9-10). Rather than stiffly explaining the definition of a poem, he finds creative and humorous approaches to explain his methods of enjoying the poems, and promote the readers’ interest towards discovering the true meaning of poetry. Just as the surrounding would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world in diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments ...
Furthermore, Oliver clearly demonstrates the point that you do not have to follow society’s rules to be happy in her poem, “Wild Geese,” by using free form structure for a poem that does not rhyme. Many poems rhyme. By not rhyming or following a set structure, Oliver demonstrates that the poem does not need to follow the normal requirements for a poem to have meaning. The poem begins with a bold statement: “You do not have to be good.” The first line does not have a rhythm or pattern, which further demonstrates the further delineation from the status quo of poetry in this poem. The difference in structure between this poem and many others helps to set the poem and its message apart fro...
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
With this being said Heaney uses similes and denotations throughout his poem to put in a sense of tone in the poem to help the readers get a better understanding of what the people were going through when they would see soldiers walking about. According to Dictionary.com (“Simile”, 2016). “A simile is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared.” This is being used in line 18 where it says “standing there like youngsters” (Heaney, n.d.). This interprets how men working would pause and observe what was going on and the soldiers marching by just like kids would do when they see something remarkable. Heaney also uses Denotation. Which according to Dictionary.com, “Denotation is the explicit or direct meaning or set of meanings of a word or expression, as distinguished from the ideas or meanings associated with it or suggested by it.” This is being showed in the poem throughout various lines. It’s being showed when he writes, “They would have heard the screaming, / Then heard it stop and had a view of us / In our gloves and aprons / coming down the hill” (lines 6-9), this evokes an image showing that what is being told and said is what is truly happening. That the soldiers were so close to them that they could hear the slightest scream of a pig being
The poem shows that the young man grows up to become a fighter who does not know when to stop all in the matter of a few lines that amount to one sentence. Then in an even shorter sentence, he dies in combat. Writing this as two sentences accentuates the idea that life is short, but can even be shorter if we can not get along. The speaker’s mourning tone probably ponders if the man avoided fighting maybe he could have lived longer as suggested when mentioning killing war elephants were not enough for the man who immersed himself in the battleground. By putting oneself in an environment of anger and aggression to the point of a questionable noticing of an arrow inside of oneself can only lead to a shortened
The structure of the poem is that of a free verse. In the 1970s, free verse was considered a rebellion against traditional poetry, you could say it was out of the norm. The use of this poem has a fascinating underlying meaning. Rich may have used this form for an explicit reason, and that is to rebel against the patriarchal society that she, and all women, are trapped in. Rich is rebelling against not only traditional poets and authors of her time, but of the society that she is a part of, and against the group of ‘others’ that she and many women have been placed in. Along with the free verse form, she has an interesting choice of sentence structure throughout the poem. If you refer to the passage above, there is not a single period, but the passage (and the rest of the stanza) are one entire sentence instead, chopped into lines. This use of enjambment makes the reader read the passage in a hastier fashion, and in some cases in an awkward, and chopped way. There is a purpose behind this, and I believe that the reader is meant to read this passage and feel a sense of urgency to get through it. That sense of urgency can be reflected in the urgency that women’s rights should be fought for. Society should feel that the inequality in the social world is not right, and that equality should be sought after with persistence and hastiness. In
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...