1. What does the poet compare the “fog” to? Why?
Anthologies[edit]
This poem has been frequently anthologized.[2] Perhaps the earliest was Untermeyer, Louis, ed. (1919), Modern American Poetry, Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
Reception[edit]
Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry who first published several of the poems[3] that went into Chicago Poems, said as part of her review of that collection:[4]
I remember the emotion with which I first read many of these poems ... That first conviction of beauty and power returns to me as I read them again. This is speech torn out of the heart, because the loveliness of ... a fog coming on "little cat feet,"—the incommunicable loveliness of the earth, of life—is too keen to be borne ....
Staging[edit]
In 1959 and 1960, Bette Davis and her husband Gary Merrill toured the nation, putting on The World of Carl Sandburg, a dramatic staged reading of selected Sandburg poetry and prose, culminating in a one month run on Broadway (with Leif Erickson instead of Merrill). One review described highlights of Davis's performance, including:
... as if on catlike feet, she makes "Fog" seem new; ...