Portrait of a Motor Car
Portrait of a Motor Car - meaning Summary
Car as Living Presence
Sandburg’s short portrait treats a motor car as a living, animate presence—part dog, part eagle, part ghost—whose movement devours roads and hills. The poem links the machine to Danny the driver’s desires and identity: it inhabits his dreams and runs in his blood. Rather than technical description, the poem condenses longing, motion, and possession into vivid, bodily metaphors that make the car an extension of the man who drives it.
Read Complete AnalysesIT'S a lean car ... a long-legged dog of a car ... a gray-ghost eagle car. The feet of it eat the dirt of a road ... the wings of it eat the hills. Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep. It is in Danny's life and runs in the blood of him ... a lean gray-ghost car.
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