Improved Farm Land
Improved Farm Land - meaning Summary
Nature Replaced by Agriculture
The poem describes the conversion of a half-mile of timbered Grand Prairie along the Monon into productive corn land. It traces the violence of clearing—axes, railsplitters, dynamite, plows—and the resulting “improved” farmland where hogs now root. The tone is plain and ironic, emphasizing how thoroughly the landscape has been altered: the trees and their deep roots are gone, and the land can no longer "remember" its former, singing forest life.
Read Complete AnalysesTall timber stood here once, here on a corn belt farm along the Monon. Here the roots of a half-mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms. Then the axemen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle— the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush. Dynamite, wagons, and horses took the stumps— the plows sunk their teeth in— now it is first-class corn land— improved property—and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops. It would come hard now for this half mile of improved farm land along the Monon corn belt, on a piece of Grand Prairie, to remember once it had a great singing family of trees.
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