Poem-a-Day - "Good Night" by Carl Sandburg

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July 4, 2021

Good Night


Carl Sandburg

Many ways to spell good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
        spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
        and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack
        mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying
        in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields
        to a razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
                                     Many ways to spell good night.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Good Night” appeared in Smoke and Steel (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1921).

Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. The author of several collections of poetry and prose, he was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime. He died on July 22, 1967.

Smoke and Steel
(Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1921)


“To the Others” by Lola Ridge
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“A Patriotic Leading” by Gertrude Stein
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Thanks to R. Erica Doyle, author of proxy (Belladonna Books, 2013), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Watch a Q&A about Doyle’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year
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