Stranger

Stranger

Text of Poem	Following his father’s footsteps Clem Murphy retired at fifty and left his boy on the farm— but he is unhappy, a stranger in a strange land. The little Iowa town stares curiously at Clem’s ideas, its Chamber of Commerce invokes the soot of factory chimneys hoping to grow up into a second Chicago out of the egg cases of the farmers.
First Line	Following his father's footsteps
Original Pub Location	The Sun at Noon
Original Publication Date	1943
Original Citation	The Sun at Noon. Muscatine, Iowa: The Prairie Press, 1943. 26.
Complete Poems	57
Hearst Collections	The Sun at Noon 26, Snake in the Strawberries 21.
Word Count	61
Poetic Form	open
Bibliographic Notes	Protagonist named Clem Murphy. Iowa mentioned in the poem.
Themes	retirement alienation
Twitter Quote	Clem Murphy retired at fifty / and left his boy on the farm— / but he is unhappy

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