Fog · Class 10 English · First Flight Poetry: 60 flashcards

Carl Sandburg, an American poet. It is six lines and twenty-one words long — the shortest poem in the Class 10 course.

A cat. That is the first question the textbook asks and the whole idea of the poem.

On little cat feet — that is, silently, softly and without being noticed by anybody.

Because nobody ever sees fog arrive. You look out of a window and it is simply there, and you cannot say when it began — which is precisely what a cat does when it enters a room.

Because fog is enormous and covers a whole city in this poem, yet it arrives on small, quiet feet. The largest thing in the poem moves on the smallest part of a small animal.

The fog. There is no actual cat anywhere in the poem.

Because the word 'fog' never returns after the first line, so from line three there is only 'it' — and the reader, having just been given a cat's feet, half expects 'it' to be the cat.

It sits, looking over the harbour and the city, on silent haunches.

Sitting with the knees bent — the hind quarters rather than the feet. It is the poem's only glossed expression.

A cat on a windowsill: settled, quite still, gazing out over everything and interested in none of it. Two words, and the posture is complete.

A harbour and a city — something enormous, supplied in three words. It is what a large animal would survey from a height, and the fog is doing exactly that.

The fog moves on. That is the entire departure, in three words.

Because nothing drives the fog away. No wind gets up, no sun burns it off, and nobody notices it going; it simply leaves when it is ready, which is the most cat-like thing in the poem.

No. There is no 'like' and no 'as' anywhere in the poem. He never compares the two things at all.

He gives the fog a cat's feet, a cat's posture and a cat's manners, and stops. The reader assembles the cat without being told to.

It comes on little cat feet; it sits on silent haunches looking out; and it moves on of its own accord — arrival, posture and departure.

Silence. Fog makes no sound and neither does a cat, and everything else grows out of that shared fact — the quiet feet, the silent haunches, the unannounced leaving.

Three sentences and three movements: it comes, it sits, it moves on. That is a complete visit, beginning to end, in six lines.

Nothing drives it off. The poem says only that it moves on, of its own accord, exactly as a cat would.

Say no; point out that there is no 'like' or 'as' anywhere in the poem; and then give the three cat behaviours the poet supplies instead.

As comparing two things by handing a quality of the one straight to the other. Learn the wording, since it is what an examiner expects.

A simile says openly that one thing is like another and uses 'like' or 'as', so the two stay separate. A metaphor drops the comparison and hands the feature over, so the two merge.

A metaphor, from the first line to the last. There is no 'like' anywhere in it and no 'as'.

Because one is the example and the other is the rule. The textbook asks whether the poet says the fog is like a cat, and then explains the device that lets him avoid saying it.

It is a kind of metaphor — the kind in which the feature transferred belongs to something alive. Here it is an animal rather than a person, but a lifeless thing has been given the behaviour of a living one.

Storm, tiger, and then two verbs — pounces over the fields, growls.

Because a metaphor is judged by what it lets you say next. The noun on its own is a label; the verbs are what make it usable in a poem.

Train — a snake — winds through the hills, hisses at the platform. The noun alone would be worth very little.

Fire — a wild beast — devours a house, licks the walls, refuses to be tamed.

School — a beehive — hums all morning, everybody at a job. An anthill would work for the same reasons.

Home — a nest — holds you, is returned to, and is eventually left.

The number of places where it fits. A metaphor that matches at one point runs out in half a line; one that matches at four can hold a whole poem.

Five — silence, softness, stillness, an arrival nobody notices, and a departure with no explanation. That is why the poem never has to strain.

One that has become so familiar it no longer transfers anything — the foot of a hill, the mouth of a river, the leg of a table. Nobody notices them as comparisons any more.

Because it is worn out. Everybody has heard it, so it adds nothing to a sentence — which is the opposite of Sandburg's cat.

A poem about a storm, comparing it with an animal.

Visualise the force of the storm, hear its sound, feel its power, and notice the sudden calm that happens afterwards.

Choose the animal last. Start with the four things you were told to notice, then find the creature that can do all four — something that arrives, roars, flattens a field and then goes quiet.

Do not say the storm is like a tiger. Give it paws, a growl and a temper that ends as suddenly as it began, and let the reader do the rest.

Define metaphor in the textbook's words; distinguish it from a simile by the missing 'like' or 'as'; complete each table row with a noun and at least two verbs; and use all four instructions for the storm poem.

No. The six line endings are comes, feet, looking, city, haunches and on, and not one pair of them chimes.

List the words at the ends of the six lines. There is no scheme to describe because there is no rhyme at all.

No. The lines are of different lengths — two are only three words long — and nothing settles into a rhythm a reader could count on.

As poetry that does not have an obvious rhythm or rhyme. The definition is worth learning exactly as it stands.

Because only rhyme and metre have been given up. Word choice, images, sentence order and above all line breaks are all still under control, and in this poem very tight control.

It makes a pattern, and once a pattern exists the ear begins waiting for the next chime, so a reader of rhymed verse is always half a line ahead, predicting.

Because the poem is about something that arrives without being noticed, sits without a sound and leaves without being seen off. A predictable poem about an unannounced visitor would undo its own subject.

The fog announces nothing, and the verse announces nothing. Form and subject agree.

The line breaks. Each of the six lines is a separate small movement, and the reader takes the poem one piece at a time.

The first. 'The fog comes' ends a line and 'on little cat feet' begins the next, so the animal arrives at the opening of a line.

Because a surprise lands hardest at the start of a line. The break holds the reader for an instant on an ordinary statement about weather, and then supplies an animal.

Nothing would be wrong with it, but the cat would simply appear in the middle of a phrase. Same words, quite a different poem.

'It sits looking' is held back from what it is looking at; 'over harbour and city' arrives; and only then does 'on silent haunches' explain the posture — the order in which somebody would actually notice a cat on a sill.

So that the departure is separated from everything before it. Three words, alone, after a pause — which is what a full stop and a paragraph break would do in prose.

No. Nothing is explained, nobody learns anything and no lesson is drawn — not even an adjective of approval.

Because describing something exactly is enough. The poem's whole ambition is to make a reader see fog arriving as it really does, and having done so it stops. Nobody asks what the moral of a photograph is.

That the poem's subject is the fog's visit, its method is metaphor, and its achievement is exactness rather than instruction. That is true, and better than inventing a message.

Several — which is why the term is worth learning properly rather than once. The Class 10 poetry section contains more than one poem without rhyme or regular metre.

Say no; list the six line endings as proof; give the textbook's definition of free verse word for word; and then add why it suits this poem — rhyme announces, and this fog does not.

Naming the first line break and saying what it does: the cat arrives at the start of a line, which is where a surprise lands hardest.