It’s not one of those milestone commemorations, just something I noticed. This week marks the 134th anniversary of Carl Sandburg’s birth. Since I was a child, I’ve read and reread Sandburg’s poems and his mammoth biography of Abraham Lincoln. He won a Pulitzer prize for both endeavors. In his day, Sandburg was not only a potent literary figure, but also a resonant political voice. He quit school following completion of the eighth grade. For the next decade he bounced through a succession of odds jobs. He delivered milk, cut ice, laid bricks, worked on a wheat farm in Kansas and shined shoes in a hotel. In 1897, he began what would prove to be a formative odyssey. He traveled the American railways as a hobo. The cumulative effect of these experiences made Sandburg keenly aware of the plight of the American laborer and of the deep chasm between rich and poor. While traveling he also learned a number of folks songs, the substance of which would inspire his own writing. Sandburg volunteered for the Spanish-American War. Upon return, he enrolled in Lombard College, an undertaking he supported with work as a fireman. By 1908, Sandburg had published two volumes of poetry, gotten married to Lilian Steichen and become active in the Wisconsin Social Democratic party. Sandburg enjoyed increasing success and recognition as a writer. As above, the literary world took notice of his talent, awarding him a Pulitzer in 1940 and again in 1951. My friends in the academy, who are better read and smarter, might disagree, but I hold Sandburg to be as important to American writing as Hemmingway or Steinbeck. With all of that as backdrop, I have a sense that Sandburg’s talents are no longer celebrated outside some perfunctory march through a freshman literature class. Perhaps they don’t even peek through there. I mentioned this to a friend who I think of as being very well-read and culturally literate. Their response went something like, “Who?”
Be that as it may, I probably owe my fascination with things political in part to my time reading Sandburg’s work. My favorite poem is “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter.” As I watch the presidential election scrabble unfold, I am continually reminded of Bunkshooter. This is especially so when I watch Republicans try to out-Conservative one another. Bunkshooter stands as an ode to the goodness of Jesus and the hypocrisy of those trying to attach their fortunes to his story. As such, a couple lines from the poem bear quoting:
He never came near clean people or dirty people but
they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your
crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
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hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
of the running.
I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined
up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men
now lined up with you paying your way…
I don’t want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
I won’t take my religion from any man who never works
except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory
except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.
Yes, I hear the detractors already. Sandburg was a socialist. I get how dirty that word has become. Funny how we internalized the pandering demagoguery of a self-aggrandizing hack like Joseph McCarthy, but the beautiful, simple words of Sandburg get lost.
This in turn makes me wonder just what it takes to have staying power in the American mindset. We’re exceptional at producing one-hit wonders, flashes in the pan and shooting stars. Substance and staying power prove much more elusive. Case in point: Can you name the first American actor to be given a million dollar movie contract? Liz Taylor, right? Wrong. Answer: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, a Keystone Kop and mentor to Buster Keaton. When’s the last time you heard about him? Exactly.
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Matthew Pate, a Pine Bluff native who holds a doctoral degree in criminal justice, is a senior research fellow with the Violence Research Group at the University at Albany. He may be contacted via pate.matthew@gmail.com