Page 2 - LN3-MODULE-FOG

comes on its little feet. This means the fog advances towards the city very slowly and calmly
just like a cat. One never knows how and when the fog will enter the city. Therefore, fog is
compared to the cat which enters our home in an unpredictable manner. Next he says that
the fog sits over the whole of the city as a cat sits silently by folding her legs behind itself
and looks around the nearby places and things. Similarly, it seems that the fog silently
covers the whole of the city and the harbour and is sitting over them looking around like a
cat. After a while the fog leaves the city and moves on. The poet says so because it is a
natural phenomenon that fog does not stay at a place for long and leaves the place after a
few hours. So, here also the poet says that just like a cat, the fog leaves the place very
silently without being noticed by anyone.
Literary devices:
1. Metaphor: Fog is compared to cat (On little cat feet)
2. Rhyme scheme: There is no rhyme scheme followed. Poem is in free verse
3. Enjambment: When a sentence continues to next line (It sits looking….. then moves on)
4. Personification: fog has been personified - Fog comes, it sits

Analysis Of Fog
"Fog" is probably Carl Sandburg's best-known poem and has been a popular choice for study
since it was first published in Chicago Poems in 1916.
Sandburg was inspired to write it one day out walking near Chicago's Grant Park. He had
with him a book of Japanese haiku, the short 17-syllable poems that capture essences of the
natural world.
He was on his way to meet someone and had some spare time, so he wrote "Fog" and
developed what is essentially a haiku into something more.
Carl Sandburg wrote a great deal of poetry throughout his busy life and was also well known
as a collector of American folk songs. He wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln that is still a
popular read today.
"Fog" is a poem that reflects Sandburg's interest in the natural world and beautifully
captures a moment or two when the fog came moving in over the harbour waters, a
powerful image given life through a metaphorical cat.

Analysis of Fog
"Fog" is a short poem, six lines long, split into two stanzas. It is a free verse poem, having no
regular rhyme or set meter (metre in British English).
The poem is an extended metaphor, the poet seeing the fog as a cat that comes on tiny,
silent feet, as cats do when they are stalking for example. Only a cat can move in such a
way, almost imperceptibly, and in complete silence.
But why choose a cat?
 A cat is an independent animal, it doesn't follow rules, it slips and slides in and out of
our lives as it pleases, just like fog, which knows no boundaries.
 Cats are stealthy, moving in slow motion at times. They can fix themselves onto an
object or creature, seemingly in a trance, yet they appear to be moving in a most
mysterious fashion.
This poem captures a little of this feline mystery. The reader's mind becomes filled with this
dual imagery of fog and cat, fog turning into a cat, cat morphing back into the fog. By doing
this, the poet is introducing the idea that the fog is alive and is an entity.