Slabs of the Sunburnt WestHarcourt, Brace, 1922 - 76 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
ain't Beat Black horizons bluejay blue blurry jackass bones boy nobody knows Brancusi buck private candle canyon walls child clean clocks corn belt dance dark door knob doorsills eyes face fingers fog moon galoot gates of tombs gold good-a-by Grand Prairie gray mouse gray Halsted Street hand HARSK head of hair hi-eeee hole-in-a-wall honorable orators human heartbeat Hush baby Kill em knock letting out hallelujahs limps listen look lucky star mass shadows miles MOON RIDERS motions of strangling mouse gray ran night rain gods numbers ocean shore overland passenger train overland train Pennsylvania Avenue pick prairie purple ragtime Republic riders riding sand Santa Fe trail sea blue shine silver singing skeleton horses slant of light sneaking scar-face Nemesis socket song stars storm sunset Tell to-day to-day-they lay wagon Watch your step whistles white sheet wind Windy City wisdom to think woman's
Popular passages
Page 66 - PRIMER LESSON Look out how you use proud words. When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back. They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling — Look out how you use proud words.
Page 10 - While a bull picks off one of the kids And the kid wriggles with an ear in cinders And a mother comes to carry home A bundle, a limp bundle To have his face washed, for the last time, Forgive us if it happens...
Page 12 - Put the city up; tear the city down; put it up again; let us find a city. Let us remember the little violet-eyed man who gave all, praying, " Dig and dream, dream and hammer, till your city comes.
Page 30 - They live on fighting, singing, lucky as plungers. The strong mothers pulling them on ... The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a long mountain. Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks. The strong men keep coming on.
Page 18 - Two trees are coal black. This is a great white ghost between. It is cool to look at. Strong men, strong women, come here.
Page 30 - UPSTREAM THE strong men keep coming on. They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken. They live on fighting, singing, lucky as plungers. The strong mothers pulling them on ... The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a long mountain. Call hallelujah, call amen, call...
Page 18 - The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas. Soldiers tied rags on their feet. Red footprints wrote on the snow . . . . . . and stone shoots into stars here . . . into half-moon mist to-night.
Page 14 - Mention proud things, catalogue them. The jack-knife bridge opening, the ore boats, the wheat barges passing through. Three overland trains arriving the same hour, one from Memphis and the cotton belt, one from Omaha and the corn belt, one from Duluth, the lumberjack and the iron range. Mention a carload of shorthorns taken off the valleys of Wyoming last week, arriving yesterday, knocked in the head, stripped, quartered, hung in ice boxes to-day, mention the daily melodrama of this humdrum, rhythms...
Page 8 - Forgive us if the monotonous houses go mile on mile Along monotonous streets out to the prairies . . . If a boy and a girl hunt the sun With a sieve for sifting smoke . . . Forgive us if the jazz timebeats Of these clumsy mass shadows Moan in saxophone undertones, And the footsteps of the jungle The fang cry, the rip claw hiss, The sneak up and the still watch, The slant of the slit eyes waiting — If...
Page 17 - Medicine Hat. Come out of the inland sea blue water, come where they nickname a city for you. Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves. Blue water wind in summer, come off the blue miles of lake, carry your inland sea blue fingers, carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes. White spring winds, come off the bag wool clouds, come off the running melted snow, come white as the arms of snow-born children.