Early Morning Breakthrough

This you should know about me: I'm kind of bad at talking about literature. At least, I'm bad at talking about literature in class.

Today, however, today was a breakthrough.

We're studying Carl Sandburg in class. I love Carl Sandburg. He writes poetry the way I think I would write poetry if I had sufficient talent in the area.

Anyway, here's the poem we were talking about ("Child of the Romans"):

THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
Eat steaks running with brown gravy,
Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.

And all of the sudden, while staring at this poem, sweat dripping down the back of my neck, hoping to goodness the professor wouldn't call on me, I got it. I was pulling out patterns and symbols and random observations like there was no tomorrow.

I guess "Child of the Romans" is kind of an obvious poem, but it was a proud moment for me nonetheless. I think I'm officially an English major now.