White Ash
White Ash - meaning Summary
Lonely Inventory of Love
Sandburg’s poem sketches an urban woman’s quiet domestic scene and her private reflections on different kinds of love. Using contrasts of color and fire—bonfire red, blue smoke, sputtering flame—the speaker catalogs passions that vary in intensity and outcome. The poem’s final image, a "white ash," conveys a rare love that burns clean and leaves only residue. Her unspoken thought remains confined to her parrot, goldfish, and two white mice.
Read Complete AnalysesTHERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice. She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door. Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice ... but these are some of her thoughts: The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron. The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke. The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame. And there is a love ... one in a thousand ... burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash.... And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
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