Brittany Sapp1

Mrs. Weaver

LNG312

26 April 2011

Jazz Fantasia
Carl Sandburg
Analysis
Have you ever found a song to listen to that fits your mood? Carl Sandburg supports this in

“Jazz Fantasia” poem. He uses sound devices, imagery, and personification in his writing to

explore his feelings and to express them to the “Jazzmen”.

Sandburg creates sound devices all throughout his poem “Jazz Fantasia”. He breaks out in

the first stanza stating “DRUM on your drums”, he is grabbing attention and focusing on

sounds, also in stanza two “and go hushahushahush with the slippery sand-paper”. The

intention is to appeal to our senses, reveal his feelings, arouse our emotions, or try to change

our attitudes, using sound to ensure this happens.

Another important aspect of this poem style has to do with imagery. Sandburg uses “Can

the rough stuff… now a Mississippi steamboat pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo…

and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars”. Sandburg uses imagery to articulate the

beauty in something that catches their eye, and also to set your mind to a place that relates to

his understanding.

The third stylistic is the use of personification in the poem “Jazz Fantasia”. For example “

make two people fight on the top of a stairway and scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch

tumbling down the stairs”. Sandburg uses personification to inanimate objects feelings in order
 Brittany Sapp1

to show emotion. He uses personification to make it dramatic and interesting or to convey a

certain mood, so it is easier to be related to.

The style of Sandburg helps bring out the meaning of his work. By analyzing the different

elements of Carl Sandburg’s style, I am reading and understanding his poem. In the poem “Jazz

Fantasia”, Carl Sandburg uses sound devices, imagery, and personification, to put his message

out their saying that music is apart of freedom to express another’s feelings.