Carl Sandburg: Grass

A look now at Sandburg’s poem Grass, which I think should be a model example for any person wishing to explore the manner in which repetition should be used in poetry.

Consider first the repetition of the words “pile” and “shovel” and the way in which they are repeated. Normally, especially in a short poem like this one, one would want to avoid repetition in order to ensure that the poem stays interesting. Sandburg chooses to depart from that rule of thumb.

“Pile” and “Shovel” occur in lines 1 and 2 respectively, so when they recur later they’re already familiar. And the repetition of “pile” at Lines 4 and 5 is within the same phrase so that surrounding words are the same and the word occurs visually in exactly the same place in each line. I think that what Sandburg was going for with this was to convey a sense of the magnitude of death in war – not only in terms of the numbers who died in each war, but also how war reoccurs time and again. Pile also stands out more prominently than shovel. So even though we know that the cycle of piling and shovelling is going to go on, the piles seem to build up faster than we can shovel.

I think the repetition has another effect: Sandburg has written in free verse with no metrical pattern to hold the line together or give it shape. There’s also no rhyme scheme. And yet, just looking at the poem on the page, you can see that there is some of frame which keeps it all together. That frame is the repeated pile/shovel phrases and their placement in their line.

Sandburg’s theme is that grass is ultimately more powerful than battles and it is revealed in a rather astonishing way. Look at what he does: The poem is entitled “Grass” so right up front the reader thinks they are about to settle in to a poem about Grass (which they are) only to encounter the opening words “Pile the bodies high”. In the third line you find that the speaker is the grass. The grass wants to be allowed to work. Only in the closing four lines does Sandburg uncover his theme -given time no one will recognise this as a battleground anymore. The grass hides everything away, covers all the attrocities. When the grass gets the closing strophe all to itself Sandburg no longer needs the “I cover all”. The simple statement “I am the grass, Let me work” says enough. And note how each of those get their own line? A short punchy line, the first an “I am” statement almost biblical in its construction and brevity.

The statements about the grass are also worth contrasting with those repeated pile and shovel words which describe the effects of the battle. For the effects of the battle to be really apparent specific work needs to be done – piling and shovelling. The grass doesn’t need a verb to be repeated to make its point. The grass’s work is to “cover”, a verb which occurs once in the third line and which, thanks to the sentence structure, is not at all prominent in the way that shovel and pile have been made prominent. At the end the grass simply says “Let me work” – it doesn’t need to define or describe its work. Both you and the grass know what needs to be done.

Sandburg has employed diction and rhythm that contrasts the theme of this piece. The lines are long and flowing when he describes war and death and, when he gets to grass, which should be a pastoral, gentle thing, he makes the lines clippy and short. And the diction expresses society’s detachment from war, our need to separate ourselves from it by hiding it away (either bodies in graves or by well chosen euphemism). He studiously avoids mentioning death, never gets personal (keeps the dead as “bodies” and no more) and the verbs shovel and pile is the way one would describe logs, earth or compost. Something not to linger over, but simply to get out of the way and then get on with life.

Thanks to the work of the grass, the human inability and unwillingness to confront the horror of way, it only takes a short passage of time before the people have forgotten what it was like and have to ask the conductor, “What place is this?” The war is already forgotten and gone from the mind. And the grass knows that no matter how much time passes it will always have work to do. Wars come round again.

It’s amazing how much Sandburg has managed to convey with such a short poem, especially when one considers the level of repetition which actually reduces the absolute number of lines to about 6 lines.

There are other lessons to be learnt from this. By his choice of battles, Gettysberg, Ypres, Verdun etc Sandburg refers to battles that involved great carnage. Battles with a death toll or casualty rate so high that it is unthinkable that we should speak of them as dispassionately as he does. But the use of the names is far more effective in conveying this point than having to spell it out in detail.

He can get away with the dispassionate tone and make it “fit” the poem without seeming forced by adopting the unusual view point of having the grass as the observer and the first person speaker. Not only does he cloak the grass with personality but he simultaneously creates a narrator who is present throughout time and who is accordingly in a position to observe the folly of man through history.

Other than the merest hint of a rhyme across Waterloo / Verdun, this poem is devoid of rhyme. Why? Rhyme closes lines, links lines together, gives the work a sense of completion and wholeness which is precisely what Sandburg doesn’t want here. He wants the work to have a continuing, incomplete, work in progress feel. The poem is written in the present tense: “I am the grass, let me work”.

Advertisement