Bro. Simmons "Now, gent'mens, make you'selves to home, Bro. Brown "No, Brudder Simmons, we kin safely say Any time you hears da cheers and tables crack All "Lookout fuh rain, rain, rain." Bro. Brown and Chorus "When da ducks quack loud an' da peacocks cry, An' da far off hills seems to be right nigh, Prepare fuh rain, rain, rain! "When da ole cat on da hearth wid her velvet paws 'Gins to wipin' over her whiskered jaws, Sho' sign o' rain, rain, rain! "When da frog's done changed his yaller vest, An' in his brown suit he is dressed, Mo' rain, an' still mo' rain! "When you notice da air it stan's stock still, An' da blackbird's voice it gits so awful shrill, Dat am da time fuh rain. "When yo' dog quits bones an' begins to fas', An' when you see him eatin', he's eatin' grass: Shoes', trues', cert'nes' sign ob rain!" Refrain "No, Brudder Simmons, we kin safely say, 'Tain't gwine tuh be no rain today. Kase da sut ain't fallin' an da dogs ain't sleep, An' you ain't seen no spiders fum dare cobwebs creep; Last night da sun went bright to bed, An' da moon ain't nevah once been seen to hang her head; If youse watched all dis, den you kin safely say, Dat dar ain't a-gwine to be no rain today. No rain today!" Carl Sandburg Carl (August) Sandburg was born of Swedish stock at Galesburg, Illinois, January 6, 1878. His schooling was haphazard; at thirteen he went to work on a milk wagon. During the next six years he was, in rapid succession, porter in a barber shop, scene-shifter in a cheap theatre, truck-handler in a brickyard, turner apprentice in a pottery, dish-washer in Denver and Omaha hotels, harvest hand in Kansas wheatfields. These tasks equipped him, as no amount of learning could have done, to be the laureate of industrial America. When war with Spain was declared in 1898, Sandburg, avid for fresh adventure, enlisted in Company C., Sixth Illinois Volunteers. On his return from the campaign in Porto Rico, Sandburg entered Lombard College in Galesburg and, for the first time, began to think in terms of literature. After leaving college, where he had been captain of the basket-ball team as well as editor-in-chief of the college paper, Sandburg did all manner of things to earn a living. He was advertising manager for a department store and worked as district organizer for the SocialDemocratic party of Wisconsin. He became a salesman, a 1 Sut soot. pamphleteer, a newspaperman. On the staff of a business magazine, he became a "safety first" expert, his articles on accident prevention bringing him before manufacturers' conventions, where he talked about machinery safeguards and methods found successful in reducing injuries in factory organizations. In 1904 Sandburg published the proverbial "slender sheaf," a tiny pamphlet of twenty-two poems, uneven in quality, but strangely like the work of the mature Sandburg in feeling. What is more, these experiments anticipated the very inflection of the later poems, with their spiritual kinship to Henley and Whitman; several of these early experiments (with the exception of the rhymed verses) might be placed, without seeming incongruous, in the most recent collection of Sandburg's pieces. The idiom of Smoke and Steel (1920) is more intensified, but it is the same idiom as that of "Milville" (1903), which begins: Down in southern New Jersey they make glass. By day and by night, the fires burn on in Milville and bid the sand let in the light. Meanwhile the newspaperman was having a hard struggle to keep the poet alive. Until he was thirty-six years old Sandburg was totally unknown to the literary world. In 1914 a group of his poems appeared in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse; during the same year one of the group (the now famous "Chicago") was awarded the Levinson prize of two hundred dollars. A little more than a year later his first, full-fledged book was published, and Sandburg-tardily but triumphantly-had arrived. Chicago Poems (1916) is full of ferment; it seethes with a direct poetry surcharged with tremendous energy. If Frost is an intellectual aristocrat, Sandburg might be termed an emotional democrat. Here is an almost animal exultation that is also an exaltation. Sandburg's speech is simple and powerful; he uses slang as freely (and beautifully) as his predecessors used the now archaic tongue of their times. Never has the American vulgate been used with such artistry and effect. (See Preface.) Immediately the cries of protest were heard: Sandburg was coarse and brutal; his work ugly and distorted; his language unrefined, unfit for poetry. His detractors forgot that Sandburg was only brutal when dealing with brutality; that beneath his toughness, he was one of the tenderest of living poets; that, when he used colloquialisms and a richly metaphorical slang, he was searching for new poetic values in "limber, lasting, fierce words"-unconsciously answering Whitman who asked, "Do you suppose the liberties and brawn of These States have to do only with delicate lady-words? With gloved gentleman-words?" Cornhuskers (1918) is another step forward; it is fully as sweeping as its forerunner and far more sensitive. The gain in power and restraint is evident in the very first poem, a magnificent panoramic vision of the prairie. Here is something of the surge of a Norse saga; Cornhuskers is keen with a salty vigor, a vast sympathy for all that is splendid and terrible in Nature. But the raw violence is restrained to the point of a half-withheld mysticism. There are, in this volume, dozens of those delicate perceptions of beauty that must astonish those who think that Sandburg can write only a big-fisted, rough-neck sort of poetry. As Sandburg has sounded some of the most fortissimo notes in modern poetry, he has also breathed some of its softest phrases. "Cool Tombs," one of the most poignant lyrics of our time, moves with a new music; "Grass" whispers as quietly as the earlier "Fog" stole in on stealthy, cat feet. Smoke and Steel (1920) is the synthesis of its predecessors. In this ripest of his collections, Sandburg has fused mood, accent and image in a new intensity. Whether the poet evokes the spirit of a jazz-band or, having had the radiance (the "flash crimson”), prays to touch life at its other extreme, this volume is not so vociferous as it is assured. It is a worthy setting for the flaming title poem; it is, in spite of certain overmystical accents, an epic of industrialism. Smoke-belching chimneys are here, quarries and great boulders of iron-ribbed rock; here are titanic visions: the dreams of men and machinery. And silence is here-the silence of sleeping tenements and sun-soaked cornfields. Smoke and Steel is a rich amalgam; indigenous to the core. And what makes it so vital is Sandburg's own spirit: a never-sated joy in existence, a continually fresh delight in the variety and wonder of life. Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1923) is a fresh fusing: here we have in quick succession the sardonic invectives of "And So Today," the rhapsody of "The Windy City" (an amplification of the early "Chicago"), and the panoramic title-poem. Although the book's chief exhibit is the amplitude of its longer poems, there are a few brevities (such as "Upstream") which have the vigor of a jubilant cry. Sandburg is still tempted to talk at the top of his voice, to bang the table and hurl his loudest epithets into the teeth of his opponents, but often indeed he goes to the other extreme; he is likely to leave his material soft and loose instead of solidifying his emotions. There are even times when the poet seems unsure whether or not he can furnish more than a clue to the half-realized wisps of his imagination. But though his meaning may not always be clear, there is no mistaking the power of his feeling or the curious cadences of his music. Besides his poetry, Sandburg has written two volumes of highly imaginative and, if one can conceive of such a thing, humorously mystical short tales for children: Rootabaga Stories (1922) and Rootabaga Pigeons (1923). However, most of his time during the last five years has been spent in travelling and studying documents for his remarkable Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, which is to be published on Lincoln's birthday, 1926. During the last few years the poet has perfected a unique lecture-part recital, part singing of American folk-tunes, part "circus," as he describes it-which has been given throughout the country. Accompanied by his guitar, Sandburg brings new values to the reading of poetry. And his low-toned footnotes are full of philosophic asides; even his definitions have a flavor peculiarly their own. Speaking of realism and romanticism, he once told the following fable: "There was a man who did not find in his house all he desired. One day he came in to find his wife working with a workbasket full of bright silk threads. He caught up a handful. He held them tight for a moment. Then he opened his hand. The threads became hundreds of brilliant butterflies flying joyfully about the room. The man watched them. Then he opened his hand, gathered them all in, tightened his hold. They became silk threads; he returned them to the workbasket. . . . And if you can believe that," Sandburg concluded with the silver ghost of a smile, "you are a romanticist." Sandburg has been on the staff of the Chicago Daily News since 1919, and lives in Elmhurst, Illinois, within commuting distance of Chicago and within earshot of frogs, silver peepers and "evening waterfalls of songs." |