Woodbury High School - Warrior Yearbook (Woodbury, CT)

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Page Fourteen VALEDICTORY ESSAY LILLIAN HICOCK “Sandburg - A Man of Hie People” “The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.” One would scarcely believe that the few lines just quoted could cause such a furore in the literary world that a complete revolution of the ideas of poetry would ensue. However, such has been the case in regard to this brief symbolic poem, with its graphic and daring comparison, whimsical in its originality written by the poet and biographer, Carl Sandburg. Carl Sandburg of Swedish descent was born in Galesburg, Illinois, January 6, 1878. His father was an uneducated man whose real name was August Johnson, and he worked as a construction hand on a western railroad. Carl’s schooling was very irregular, and at the age of thirteen he went to work on a milk wagon. Soon afterward he became a partner in a barber shop, and then a scene shifter in a cheap theatre, a truck handler in a brick yard, turner apprentice in a pottery shop, dishwasher in Denver and Omaha hotels, and a harvest hand in the Kansas wheatfields. He was occupied in these various positions for six years. These positions gave him an ideal training for his life work. When war with Spain was declared in 1898, always ready for adventure, he enlisted in Company C, Sixth Illinois Volunteers. When he returned, he entered Lombard College in Galesburg, and there became interested in literature. Although working his way through college, Sandburg was captain of the basketball team as well as editor-in-chief of the college paper. After leaving college, he was advertising manager for a department store, and worked as a district manager for the Socialist-Democratic party of Wisconsin. In succession he was a salesman pamphleteer and newspaper man. On the staff of a business magazine, he became a safety first expert, and his articles on Accident Prevention brought him as a speaker before many manufacturers’ conventions. In 1904 Sandburg published a pamphlet of twenty-two poems. They were uneven in quality, but were forerunners to his later poems, similar in style, but not as intensified. His occupation as a newspaper man deterred his appearance before the public as a poet, but in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in “Poetry —a Magazine of Verse,” in the same year his famous poem, “Chicago,” took the Levinson prize of $200.00, and a year later his first book was published. He had arrived. His Chicago poems were published in 1916, “Cornhuskers” in 1918, “Smoke and Steel” in 1920, and “Slabs of the Sunburst West” in 1923. He has written many mystical short stories for children, among them the “Rootabaga Series” in 1922, and Root-abaga Pigeons in 1923. But the great masterpiece is the Biography of Abraham Lincoln. It is not at all difficult to discover the elements which make this biography so interesting. There are none of the dry statistics which are usually supposed to make up a biography. There are statistics to be sure, but they are used merely as incidentals rather than as the main theme. For example in a biography of ordinary type we read that “Abraham Lincoln, politician and statesman, was born in Kentucky, February 12th, 1809.” How different is the account of Lincoln’s birth which Sandburg gives. He writes in his conversational way that “One morning in February of the year 1809, Tom Lincoln came out of his cabin to the road, stopped a neighbor and asked him to tell the “granny woman,” Aunt Peggy Waters, that Nancy would need help soon. “On the morning of February twelfth, a Sunday, the granny woman was there at the cabin, and she and Tom Lincoln and the moaning Nancy Hanks welcomed into a world of battle and blood, of whispering dreams and wistful dust, a new child, a boy.” “A little later that morning, Tom Lincoln threw some extra wood on the fire, and an extra bearskin over the mother, went out of the cabin and walked two miles up the road to where the Sparrows, Tom and Betsy lived. Dennis Hanks, the nine-year-old boy adopted by the Sparrows, met Tom at the door. “In his slow way of talking—he was a slow and quiet man, Tom Lincoln told them ‘Nancy’s got a baby boy.’ A half sheepish look was in his eyes, as though maybe more babies were not wanted in Kentucky just then.” This is the story as told by a man who saw the human side of the affair, who did not simply state the date of Lincoln’s birth in order to show'

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AMY ELSIE POULIN “Her step was royal—queenlike.” Glee Club (3, 4). French Club (4). Dramatic Club (4). Class Will. Amy has added interest to many classes this year, through her own interest and the initiative she has shown in accomplishing more than was required in the curriculum. Did you see the marvelous project she did for Modern History? Yes Amy is industrious, but she has a ready sense of humor and we are indebted to her for many of the witty articles appearing in the Mirror. Although we do not know what Amy intends to do after graduating, we are sure she would make a very excellent storekeeper with very little practice. FRANCES LILLIAN SMITH “FRAN” “Looking wistfully with wide blue eyes as in a picture.” Class Secretary (1). Glee Club (3, 4). French Club (4). Dramatic Club (4). Dance Committee (4). Art Editor of the Wide Awake (4). Class Prophecy. “W'ho is the tall demure girl with the dreamy blue eyes?” Don't you know Frances? She has be:n an indispensable worker on committees for dances and class entertainments. Rumor hath it that a certain member of the Junior Class will be very lonesome next year, and you must believe us when we say that we feel the utmost compassion towards him. DOROTHY EDITH WEASA “DOT” “Thy smile has brightened many a young man's life.” Class Treasurer (2). Track (2, 3). Basketball (1, 2, 3). A. A. (1, 2, 3, 4). French Club (4). Dramatic Club member (4). Nature Study Club (4). Dance Committee (4). Class Prophecy (4). There will be many long faces in June when Dot leaves our midst. Dot is in her element when on the dance floor and gatherings at school and about town would be far from complete without her. We have heard that she has developed quite a liking for the great north woods and a decided antipathy for the gypsy moth, both for some deep, mysterious, unknown reason. We feel sure that Dot will always make a decided effort to obtain what she desires in life.

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Page Fifteen that such a man, who later became prominent, did come into existence at that time, but who shows to us the pathos and homely circumstances surrounding Lincoln’s life which made the man before he became prominent. Even in his prose writing, Sandburg displays the soul of a poet, for not many biographers, in telling of a man’s life would stop to remark on the beauties of the natural scenery surrounding him or to relate humorous incidents connected with the man. While reading the Life of Lincoln one can easily believe it to be a moving and interesting novel, so vivid, yet accurately is the stage set and the drama of Lincoln’s life enacted upon it. Sandburg himself has an ideal background for writing a biography of Lincoln, inasmuch as he himself was born and brought up in the locality where Lincoln spent the greater part of his life. He has an intimate knowledge of the background from which Lincoln stood out, and so is enabled to make him real to us. Oftentimes in telling a story he lapses into the dialect so familiar to him and to Lincoln before him. He adopts his style of writing to the subject, and uses simple words in a conversational manner. He seems to particularly admire Lincoln’s ability as a story teller, and relates many of the famous Lincoln anecdotes. One of the many stories of Lincoln which he tells concerning his marriage is as follows: “At the Edwards house that evening the Reverend Charles Dresser in canonical robes performed the ring ceremony. Behind Lincoln stood a Supreme Court Judge, Thomas C. Browrn, fat, bluff, blunt and an able law'yer not accustomed to weddings. As Lincoln placed the ring on the bride’s finger and repeated the form, “With this ring, I thee endow with all my goods, chattels, lands and tenements,’’ the Supreme Court judge blurted out in a suppressed tone that everybody heard, “Lord, Lincoln, the statute fixes all that.” The minister kept a straight face, became serious and then pronounced Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd man and wife in the sight of God and man. Sandburg is a student of human nature with wide powers of observation and no matter what the subject may be, he never loses the common touch which endears him to all readers. He gives to us a realistic picture of Lincoln the man. He does not tell us merely of Lincoln’s accomplishments, but of the man, and his character and background. He does not attempt to make Lincoln appear superhuman, but portrays him as a very human person, humorous and pathetic. In order to make the picture even more realistic, he deals at length with Lincoln’s surroundings, his family, his friends and his opponents. Surely a man who can give to us a picture of Lincoln as an everyday man, while still retaining his dignity and grandeur must be a very interesting man himself. As a biographer, Sandburg is in the front rank. With his man to man method of writing, he inspires a personal interest in the subject. What more can we demand of a biographer? Sandburg, however, not only excels as a biographer, but as a poet in the modern sense of the term. Sandburg as a poet has been attracting much attention lately, and his poems represent the diction of the modern poets. He is not a singer as was Tennyson, for his poems are always speech, sometimes violent, almost indelicate, but always vividly interesting, and even beautiful, eloquent and dramatic. His harsher poems seem to be just statements, but they have a staccato rhythm all their own. For example in his poem, “Cool Tombs” he says: “Pocahontas’ body lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November, or a paw paw in May, does she consider? does she remember?—in the dust—in the cool tombs?” One likes his poems because of the man back of them for his poems are expressions of his personality, and seem to change with his moods. Some are loud and harsh, and some are the most beautiful and gentle of lyrics as is Monotone: “The monotone of the rain is beautiful, And the sudden rise and slow relapse Of the long multitudinous rain. “The sun on the hills is beautiful, Or a captured sunset sea flung, Bannered with fire and gold. “A face I know is beautiful— With fire and gold of sky and sea, And the peace of long warm rain.” But such a lyric is usually followed by a violent poem like Chicago, showing how deeply he feels the injustice and the tragedy of life in a big city : “Hog butcher for the world Tool maker, stacker of w’heat, Player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler, Stormy, husky, brawling. City of the Big Shoulders.” They tell me you are wicked and I believe them for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes; it is true, I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wfanton hunger. And having answered so, I turn once more to those who sneer at my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses, amid the toil of piling job on job, there is a tall, bold, slugger set vivid against the little soft cities. .j. ... ❖ ❖ 1 • • ❖ • ❖ •