Picnic Boat
Picnic Boat - meaning Summary
Homecoming on Lake Michigan
The poem evokes a Sunday-night scene on Lake Michigan as a brightly lit picnic boat returns to Chicago from nearby farms. Sandburg contrasts dense darkness with rows of electric lights that transform the vessel into birds and ribbons of illumination along rails and smokestacks. The sound of waves and the brasses playing a Polish folk tune create a communal, celebratory homecoming, mixing urban waterfront atmosphere with immigrant cultural rhythms.
Read Complete AnalysesSunday night and the park policemen tell each other it is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan. A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach farms of Saugatuck. Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping in curves are loops of light from prow and stern to the tall smokestacks. Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.
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