"American lingo"

"American lingo." That's what Carl Sandburg wanted to make poetry from.

On Saturday, I had the pleasant surprise of waking up to find E. downstairs with a cup of coffee for me and the words, "Get dressed. I'm taking you on a surprise adventure."

So we hopped in the truck and drove east on I-40 for a couple hours, through eastern Tennessee and into North Carolina, through Ashville and south into a town called Flat Rock just south of Hendersonville off Highway 25 in the Blue Ridge mountains. We parked, got out, walked down a path and came to this stunning view: Connemara: Carl Sandburg's home.

I don't own any Sandburg books (yes, I'm ashamed), so what I'll post below is culled from the internet(s).

My knowledge of Sandburg was pretty poor on specifics and mostly based on what I'd been taught in high school and college: Sandburg was a great folksy American hero who wrote sweet poems about American life and fairytale-style books for kids. Of course I knew his poems "Chicago" and "Fog" and "Cool Tombs," and I knew he was the preeminent biographer of Lincoln for which he won the first of his Pulitzers. And I had a vague understanding of his feeling for the working man.

But I did not know the following: Sandburg fought in the Spanish-American war; was homeless for a time afterwards and so rode the rails getting jobs in whatever towns had work; he spent some time in jail; quit school in the 8th grade to help with family finances; he was a political activist and organizer for the Social Democratic party; he campaigned for Social Democratic presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs; he was a newspaper journalist in Chicago and also wrote articles for the International Socialist Review.

From what I read about Sandburg this morning, any more he's looked at as a kind of feeble, failed Whitman, and that his poems don't really do much other than catalog parts of American life, that his poems only expand on this point of view rather than transcending it (as Whitman did).

Apparently, Frost called him a fraud, WCW's said he didn't work hard to meet the demands of the craft, and even Elizabeth Bishop wrote a letter about him in which she tells the story of how appalled she was to see him show up at the same party as her.

See if you agree with Frost, Williams, and Bishop. Here are some lines from "The People, Yes."

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"

Anyways, I need to get back to work. Here's closer shot of Sandburg's home:

We did hike from the lake and up the hill to the house and got to go inside. I'll post some more pictures later (hopefully today).