The People Will Live On
Carl Sandburg, from "The People, Yes"
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.
The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
" I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."
The people is a tragic and comic two-face:
hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla twist-
ing to moan with a gargoyle mouth: "They
buy me and sell me... it's a game...
sometime I'll break loose..."
Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
The man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.
Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and
food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.
The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest ans a cradle of hope.
Who else for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
With constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the Labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.
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?"
The People, Yes has been regarded has Carl Sandburg's most prominent volume of poetry. The People, Yes captures the essence of American life after World War I, during the Great Depression, and before the outbreak of World War II. The People, Yes not only reflects the attitude of the American society epoch already mentioned, but the observations and interpretations of Sandburg's idea of what American society projected as important. Morton Dauwen Zabel wrote of Sandburg's The People, Yes: "No American poet now living could publish with the same authority and completeness a survey of the specifically American issue in the twentieth century poetry-how it has emerged and developed, how it diverges from foreign influence and contacts, and what it may expect, in extension or solution, from the coming talents of the humanitarian front" (2:318). The People, Yes focuses on those issues that permeated American society during this extraordinary period of history. The People, Yes not only addresses the diversity and interpersonal ideologies of American society, but the opportunity to pursue a beneficial lifestyle, the craving for an escape from the molds of primitivism, barbaric labor, and the unified pursuit of the honest dollar, not only as these ideologies apply to the industrialized twentieth century, but to the revolutionized technological age of the twenty-first century, and to each American citizen in some form or another.
From a literary perspective, "The People Will Live On" predominantly inculcates aspects of imagery. The image of the proletarian member of society is abundantly and overwhelming personified throughout Sandburg's poetry. The message of hope and renewal is also clearly expressed throughout the "The People Will Live On." This paper examines the modern movements of the twentieth century and attempts to apply said movements to Carl Sandburg's "The People Will Live On," one of only the 107 poems in the renowned The People, Yes, and examine how the modern era influenced Sandburg's perspective of American society.
The Carl Sandburg most known by his poetry, biographies of Abraham Lincoln, and novels about American is different from the earlier childhood image. Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. His father and mother immigrated to the United States from Sweden. His father, August Sandburg, was a machinist's blacksmith, but Carl exhibited none of the tenacity and ambition to follow in his father's footsteps (Anthology, 296). Carl was the second of seven, and left school at the age of eight to work various odd jobs. Carl delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat in Kansas, and shined shoes in Galesburg's Union Hotel before traveling as a hobo in 1897. When Carl was twenty, he enlisted in the Spanish-American War as a volunteer. He served as a private in Puerto Rico and sent letters about his army experiences to the local Galesburg newspaper. Carl entered Lombard College in Illinois and left without a degree. He worked various odd jobs selling stereoscopic photographs. He also traveled many places riding rails, observing hobos, and was once arrested and imprisoned for a ten day period (296). Carl's observations of society during this period of growth prompted him to write. He observed the decadence of society and the social oppression of hobos and lower-class proletarians, and in 1904; he published his first volume of poetry, In Reckless Ecstasy. Two more volumes almost immediately followed, Incidentals (1907) and The Plaint of a Rose (1908). More poetry followed, along with Rootabaga Stories (1922), The Prarie Years (1926), a four-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, one of which he won a Pulitzer prize for, and a biography of Lincoln's wife, just to list a few.
Sandburg was a national success with his volume of poetry entitled Chicago Poems (1914), but he quickly became a world success with his later volume of poetry The People, Yes (1936). This book's focus was directed and devoted primarily to the Great Depression. Sandburg observed the turmoil and struggle most Americans were facing, and wrote about the difficulty Americans faced while attempting to overcome oppression and turmoil. Harry Golden, Carl Sandburg's biographer, wrote about The People, Yes stating:
it has been described as a series of psalms which sing the
American experience: hardship, humor, ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Sandburg was a national success with his volume of poetry entitled Chicago Poems (1914), but he quickly became a world success with his later volume of poetry The People, Yes (1936). This book's focus was directed and devoted primarily to the Great Depression. Sandburg observed the turmoil and struggle most Americans were facing, and wrote about the difficulty Americans faced while attempting to overcome oppression and turmoil. Harry Golden, Carl Sandburg's biographer, wrote about The People, Yes stating:
it has been described as a series of psalms which sing the
American experience: hardship, humor, fortitude, and-
speech. Described briefly it is a book not only about
the American people, but about the way American
people talk and the things they say and their reasons
for saying them. It is affirmative, optimistic; in some places
tender, in others tough (Golden,127).
This book is not a political book, although I can see why one might refer to it as so. But this volume of poetry expresses the observations of modern American society through Sandburg's eyes. Carl Sandburg uses unique methods of rhyme and language that is unlike most poets to convey his image of proletarian society. His utilization of modern terms and modern language shatter most conventional norms. Sandburg uses the people in the strict sense, never deviating or using substitutive mythical representations, adding Chinese ideograms, or referencing Greek mythological figures as a comparison between the ancient times of antiquity and modern society. His poetry is pure and uncorrupted by the insertion of any type of search for truth or desire to distract the mind from the subject matter being presented. Sandburg focuses strictly on people, more specifically, American people, harsh, brutal, primitive in some ways, futuristic in others, but his poetry is always about the American people an the American way of life, Golden states: "The book is a poetic definition of elemental forces: love, death, life, but- especially work. The personae talk constantly about work and forward practical considerations of what makes a man a good or bad worker" (Golden, 127). No mater how unmerciful or horrid it may seem, this is the truth. And Carl Sandburg not only lived, experienced, and observed it most of his life, but wrote about it.
Carl Sandburg has been associated with imagism by few modern poets. The imagist movement was essentially a need to move away from words as symbols and towards words as reality, and was essentially a rebellion against the French Symbolism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Zach, 229). And if Carl Sandburg were to be dubbed an imagist, he would be associated with the final phase of imagism, the post-Poundian phase, named after Ezra Pound. This post-Poundian phase includes such poets as Amy Lowell, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and some of the other prominent names of twentieth century Anglo-American modernism that all come within the imagists field of radiation, which, however, may mean no more than exposure at some stage to Pound's indoctrination or familiarity with his experiments (229). The imagist movement contained three main tenets that constituted the philosophy of the movement:
1.) Direct treatment of the 'thing', whether subjective or objective.
2.) To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3.) As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome (Zach, 230).
But Carl Sandburg has been predominantly associated with Walt Whitman. His focus on American society resembles the focus Walt Whitman projected during the civil war. Zabel has associated The People, Yes as the primary example for this comparison with Walt Whitman. Zabel states referring to The People, Yes: "It is a vast retrospect of life and labor in America that suggests an obvious comparison-Leaves of Grass" (2:318). This comparison is more than appropriate. If one were to carefully read several poems of Walt Whitman's and then read several poems of Carl Sandburg's the similarities are obviously correlative. The recurring theme of American society continuously and without remorse repeats and thumps like the sound of an over zealous heart throughout "The People Will Live On." Zabel attempts to pinpoint the difference between Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Sandburg's The People, Yes and states: "The difference between Whitman and Sandburg is primarily a difference between a visionary imagination and a realistic one, between a prophet who deals in the racial and social aspects of humanitarianism and a historian who handles the specific facts of industrial life and labor" (2:319). The difference is clear between Sandburg's exploitation of the American industrial revolution and Whitman's cry for humanity. Zabel also compares Sandburg's poetry with that of modern poets and modern poetic subject matter, and derides the great poetry of Ezra Pound for being slang and parody. Zabel states referring to The People, Yes: "it rings true to the American ear far beyond the language of the average "regional" (author's quotations) novel or proletarian poem, and one has only to compare any random sample of it with the slang parts of Pound's Cantos or MacLeish's Frescoes to realize that one is the pure article and the other something like a parody heard from the stage of the London Colosseum" (2:319). However, this comparison may seem a little harsh and unforgiving to other modern poets. One must remember that Sandburg's poetry is centrally focused on American life, and minimally deviates from American subject matter whereas Pound and MacLeish incorporate various cultural aspects that reflect experimentation and other interests besides the American way of life and the unification of American themes.
Carl Sandburg's observances of society during the Great Depression are detailed and described in "The People Will Live On." The opening line of the poem immediately captures the reader's attention "the people will live on," and places the reader on a state of continuous alert. The rhyme scheme of this opening line continues throughout the poem, but is particularly important at the beginning of the poem, so that the reader is attuned to the author's position of the importance of the poem. Sandburg continues to refer to the people, focusing on his subject matter and letting the reader know that the people are the issue. But Sandburg's people are imperfect people. From the second line of the poem the reader becomes aware that Sandburg is not referring to an upper class bourgeois set of people, but more to a lowlier common type, capable of flaws, and incapable of possessing the necessities to adapt to the upper class setting.
But the people referred to in this poem are also a learning people. Even the most commonest of readers can visualize the image of the common people Sandburg is conveying in the next two lines: "The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold." This seems to either attract or repulse the reader at this point because this image of common people is an image that American society is all too familiar with, and is an image that is all too copious. The word blundering connotes the already mentioned image of the people's imperfections. But blundering is a particularly strong word that Sandburg uses to convey this image. The word blundering connotes a serious mistake caused by ignorance or confusion, so when Sandburg refers to the people as "learning people" he is appropriately projecting the image of a common man capable of very serious costly mistakes. This third line refers to the people's exploitation, and lack of control over their mundane existence. Sandburg notes that the people are easily gullible, if not susceptible, of subjecting themselves to the hardships of exploitation whether that exploitation is within the overbearing walls of the factory, or the unforgiving streets of the modern city. This lack of control is an essential element of modernistic traits, and symbolizes the people's primitivism within their surroundings by being unable to rise above the bourgeois class and seize control of their fate. Sandburg continues with: "And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds, The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback." This seems to connote the people's originating ground, their ground for relaxation and tranquility, the earth. The earth symbolizes the people's willingness, and if not willingness, participation of returning to their "grassroots" and renewing their spirit to face another day of difficult circumstances. This renewal resembles similar stories of the particular time period, especially in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, in which the main character of the story is always renewing her faith after each long day, in hopes of pursuing her life long dream, acting, which she eventually does, but not after a long period of continuous fortitude and resilience against the forces which hindered her intentions, but did not stop the inevitable outcome. Sandburg conveys this image of resilience: "You can't laugh off their capacity to take it. The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas." Sandburg wants the reader to know that these people are people of substantial fortitude and that one cannot simply laugh away their ability to return and remain subjected to horrid circumstances. The reference to the mammoth I can only assume refers to the enormous beast of everyday life filled with drama, dilemma, and turmoil that arrive in cycles of intensity.
Sandburg begins to convey a message of wishful intentions that the people want to ameliorate their circumstances. This message of wishful intentions is conveyed when Sandburg writes: "The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,/is a vast huddle with many units saying:/ "I earn my living. / I make enough to get by/ and it takes all my time/ If I had more time/ I could do more for myself/ and maybe for others. / I could read and study/ and talk things over/ and find out about things. / It takes time. / I wish I had the time." The message of the people wishing to ameliorate their horrid circumstances is distinctively present. The people even though sleepy, weary, enigmatic, still wish to elevate themselves to a higher stature and become something more prominent. Sandburg again remains focused on the proletarian class of individuals that probably at that particular time period didn't have readily available access to entities that contribute to the betterment and increase of knowledge of understanding of society. The people make just enough to get by, which seems to be Sandburg's central focus in this stanza. But the people yearn for the opportunity to "read and study and talk things over," so that maybe this continuous state of oppression can be ceased and the people can be peaceful and relaxed without the burden of worrying about their position in life.
The ability of Sandburg to convey this intense message of hope is unprecedented. The central focus on the American people is still prevalent, but this focus on hope can be interchanged with any society. Every society faces its times of turmoil, its times of exploitation and oppression. But Sandburg seems to capture the essence and general theme of these circumstances accurately through his ability to interweave the mind set of the American people, but to not directly refer to the people as the American people, so that the image of a striving society can be conveyed universally to various cultures and societies. And even though this theme of oppression is so preeminent at this point of the poem, the unified wish of a modern democratic society where everyone is equal is easily observed.
Sandburg continues to address the central focus of hope, but contrasts two types of people stating: "The people is a tragic and comic two-face:/ hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla twist-/ ing to moan with a gargoyle mouth: "They/ buy me and sell me...it's a game.../ sometime I'll break loose..." But what could this two-faced reference mean? Sandburg seems to be stating that not only are the people exploited, oppressed, yearning for change, and striving for a better set of circumstances, but that possibly the people will back stab or ungratefully crawl up that ladder of opportunity to attain that final sense of freedom. The people are heroes in the sense that most will do anything to see one succeed, but hoodlums in the sense that the people will do almost anything to attain that same success. This is a sort of paradox. Not only is Sandburg stating that the people are pillars of their communities and friends to all, but also superficial representations of a false happiness. The "good neighbor" is willing to assist their fellow neighbor, but unwilling, if that neighbor forgets the little people, to accept the final outcome of that neighbors' success. This idea is further reiterated when Sandburg refers to the "twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth" line. This image of the sly little mendacious neighbor is one that most Americans can relate. The image of an individual smiling wryly at the proletarian society unable to attain any progressive state, and always remaining within the ruins of the lower class is one image of many being projected.
But Sandburg again conveys that sense of hope that is so imminent throughout "The People Will Live On." After this presentation of the two-faced superficial proletarian scavenger, Sandburg returns to the theme of hope and future prosperity: "Once having marched/ Over the margins of animal necessity/ Over the grim line of sheer subsistence/ Them man came/ To the deeper rituals of his bones/ To the lights lighter than any bones, / To the time for thinking things over, / To the dance, the song, the story, / Or the hours given over to dreaming, / Once having so marched." This seems rather primitive upon closer examination. These lines appear to convey the image of modern America. This image of men and women subsiding on the bare necessities of subsistence living like animals amongst the controlling entities of industrialization is a characteristic of primitive modernism. But Sandburg throughout this brief stanza seems to establish man as the central figure of rationality and law. As if saying that man accepts his horridness and animal surroundings, but finally begins to think things over and reflect on their circumstances instead of dwelling on the horridness of the surroundings. This stanza seems to impress upon man, the proletarian man, that they are poor and exploited, and questions their ability to change these circumstances: "Between the finite limitations of the five senses/ and the endless of man for the beyond/ the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and/ food/ while reaching out beyond the prison of the five senses, / for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death. / This reaching is alive. / The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it. / yet this reaching is alive yet/ for lights and keepsakes." This stanza does not provide the most appropriate response to the question presented, but does seem to offer more hope to an already exhausted people. The people cling to the limitations of the five senses and the dull monotonous work, subsiding on the bare essentials of subsistence, but still remain hopeful that beyond the five sense, beyond the conventional norms of exploitation, and beyond the endless yearnings for change lies a realm of relief. This reaching that Sandburg refers to is that relief that the people so search and wish to crystallize into a tangible entity. And Sandburg conveys that even though the people have been manipulated and lied to that hopes of relief exists and that the possibility of amelioration is present.
Sandburg continues to address the exploitation and oppression of the proletarian class with powerful intense remonstrations using the perspective of the common man and not the perspective of a member of the bourgeois class. By conveying the observations of the common man, Sandburg pinpoints the true perspective of how modern society operated as opposed to viewing modern society through the eyes of the members of the bourgeois class, those members that supplied the means of production for the proletarian society. Sandburg makes the reader cognizant of the people's tolerance for the maltreatment received from the bourgeois class: "The people know the salt of the sea/ and the strength of the winds/ lashing the corners of the earth." This recognition by Sandburg seems to reveal the people's exhaustion and intolerance for these conditions. Sandburg identifies the people's feelings and emotions and realizes that the people are powerless against the bourgeois society, for the bourgeois are providing the people's means for existence, and trying to overpower those means of existence seems to be Sandburg's central emphasis towards the ending of this poem.
Sandburg seems to implicate a future salvation against the exploited conditions and circumstances in which the lower class are subjected. Sandburg implicates a future prediction of liberation, something progressive, but inevitable: "Man is a long time coming. / Man will yet win. / Brother may yet line up with brother:" What this something is, is difficult to precisely pinpoint, but this underlying theme of unification and collaboration seems to dominate these few lines. Sandburg seems to implicate and admit that this "long time coming" is far off from actually manifesting itself into reality. But the idea is implanted that a rebellion will inevitably manifest, and the people will be protected or assisted: "There are men who can't be bought." The men who can't be bought are those saviors that rescue the proletarian people, and liberate the people's oppression and exploitation. These men are the individuals that overcome restriction, and disassemble the barriers protecting the bourgeois.
"The People Will Live On" ends with a sense of hope being projected to the exploited and oppressed members of the proletarian class. Sandburg conveys the message of liberation and future progression: "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?'" These final lines project that final message of a weary people with expressions of grief and discontent preeminently apparent on their faces, but continuing to march with the shovel, the people's tool for battle, an interchangeable symbol of liberation used to face another day. The people resembling that of coal miners or construction employees feeling fatigued and weary, but remaining content and looking on towards the future, for hope of a new way of life, and a new set of circumstances is Sandburg's central theme towards the end of this poem.
Sandburg's lyrical approach to "The People Will Live On" is one of unprecedented mesmerizing affect. What can one write to convey the modern perspective of Sandburg's ability to effectively write the emotions, feelings, conditions, and circumstances of modern American society and proletarian people? Sandburg never formally declared any association with a particular modern movement, but I'm sure that during these movements he observed the poetry of other modern poets at that time and assimilated their ideas and concepts with his perspective of modern American society. I'm sure that Carl Sandburg was reflecting the actual feelings and conditions of modern society before, during, and after the Great Depression. Sandburg's ability to convey the images of proletarian society and ideals of American life is one that I have difficulty believing Ezra Pound or Eliot for that matter could ever project through poetry alone. And even though Carl Sandburg limited his subject matter to that of American society, the conditions and feelings can be universally applied to societies facing the same if not similar conditions that the American people face during these times of rapid expansion. Carl Sandburg's ability to utilize different aspects of modernism, whether it be postulating about future circumstances of the proletarian society or conveying that lasting image of the determined individual to climb that ladder of prosperity, places him amongst one of the best and one of the most realistic poets during the movements of modernity.
