activities

Activities

1. Carl Sandburg was often compared to the imagist poets, a group that used imagery and minimalism to, in effect, paint a series of vignettes describing a condition. Although Sandburg never professed membership in this group, his Chicago Poems forms a collection of illustrations of the people and land of Illinois. Many of his later critics wrote of the journalistic, detatched tone he used in portraying the lives and settings of Chicago. Compare the poems we have gone over to the series of images depicting the same themes below. Which is more effective in terms of social documentation? How are they different in terms of the emotions they evoke?

Street Scene of Chicago around1900

City Harbor

Seagulls

2. In his time, Carl Sandburg was sometimes considered a propagandist by critics who argued that his poetry had crossed the boundary between being "engaged" in modern events and being one-sidedly sentimental in favor of the people. Read "Masses", the poem most often referred to as propaganda, and Carl Sandburg's definition of poetry. Considering these two, do you think he is a propagandist?

MASSES

AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and
     red crag and was amazed;
On the beach where the long push under the endless tide
     maneuvers, I stood silent;
Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant
     over the horizon's grass, I was full of thoughts.
Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers,
     mothers lifting their children--these all I
     touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them.
And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions
     of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than
     crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the
     darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations.

TEN DEFINITIONS OF POETRY

Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.

Poetry is a journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.

Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it.

Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.

3. Carl Sandburg became the "American Bard" and wrote, as Whitman and Emerson had demanded years before, with a truly American voice. His poems depicted the country as rapid urbanization across the country occured, and as the modern conception of the "American Dream" emerged. How does Sandburg's dream for the American people compare with that of Richard Wright's in Black Boy? "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel?

THE BOXER

I am just a poor boy and my story’s seldom told
I’ve squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jest, still the man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, hmmmm

When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin’ scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters, where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know

Li la li...

Asking only workman’s wages, I come lookin’ for a job, but I get no offers
Just a comeon from the whores on 7th avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

Now the years are rolling by me, they are rockin’ even me
I am older than I once was, and younger than I’ll be, that’s not unusual
No it isn’t strange, after changes upon changes, we are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same

Li la li...

And I’m laying out my winter clothes, wishing I was gone, goin’ home
Where the new york city winters aren’t bleedin’ me, leadin’ me to go home

In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him
’til he cried out in his anger and his shame
I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains
Yes he still remains

Li la li...

If you really liked that activity, you could also use the songs:

The American Dream from Miss Saigon

Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen