Dramatic Monologue and Stream of Consciousness in Poetry
Question 7 • IC English 11 - Deering
Read the poem “Fog,” by Carl Sandburg. The fog comeson little cat feet.It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on.Which lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" most likely influenced Sandburg’s poem?
Answer
A
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table;
B
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
C
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
D
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
Explanation
Sandburg describes the fog as moving like a cat: it comes on “little cat feet,” sits, and then moves on. Eliot’s lines compare yellow smoke to an animal rubbing its muzzle and licking, which most closely matches Sandburg’s catlike image and behavior. The other choices do not describe smoke behaving like a cat.
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