Question

Read the poem “Fog,” by Carl Sandburg.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Which lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" most likely influenced Sandburg’s poem?
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

Answer 1

The lines about the smoke-as-cat image:

"The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,"

These personify smoke as a cat (rubbing its muzzle, licking), which closely parallels Sandburg’s fog-as-cat images ("on little cat feet," "on silent haunches"). Eliot’s "Prufrock" (1915) predates Sandburg’s "Fog" (1916), making influence likely.