Grass (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
“Grass,” first published in Cornhuskers, presents a side of Sandburg often overlooked: his melancholy in the face of death. Unlike “Chicago,” “Grass” is conventional in subject, language, and tone. It is a “typical” Sandburg poem in its reference to train passengers and conductors in the Midwest and its stress upon the American war dead, but the link between Americans and people of other nations in the first line suggests a common fate.
“Grass” opens with the imperative to pile bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo, then to bury them so that the grass...
[The entire page is 553 words long]
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