Sandburg's Song: Part 1

Part One: The Poet

Oh Boy, I might’ve bitten off more than I could chew on this one.  But we’re all in now! So where to begin digging in on this masterpiece of lyrical lasciviousness; this parlance of pride; this music of mockery and ballad of the “Big Shoulders”? Let’s start with the man himself.

Carl Sandburg

CarlSandburg (1878-1967) was a man of letters. Born in Galesburg, Il., a small town far west of Chicago, to Clara Mathilda and August Sandberg( he later changed the “-berg” to “-burg”) a young Carl later moved from the sleepy town to the bright gaslights of Chicago to write as a cub reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day Book. What he saw during his time in Chicago would be the inspiration to Sandburg’s greatest contribution to the realm of Windy City literature, and simultaneously gifting it one of its most known nicknames, the “City of Big Shoulders.”

First appearing in the famous Poetry magazine in March 1914, to primer the ensuing discussion I present to you Carl Sandburg’s tour de force, Chicago, in its entirety:

Chicago

First publication of "Chicago" in Poetry, 1914

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
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 wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this 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, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;


Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,


Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,


Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs the heart of the people,


Laughing!


Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Please check back for "Sandburg's Song: Part 2" for more on the poet, his legacy, and his poem

Oak Park, Il. Earnest About Hemingway

Hemingway's 1923 Passport photo 

It seems disingenuous to begin a blog about Chicago’s presence in literature by discussing Ernest Hemingway, seeing as the genius bastard never wrote a sentence about it in his fiction. Well, not exactly. Born and raised in Oak Park, Il., a suburb just past Chicago’s westside, Hemingway had a love-hate relationship with his home town, reportedly having said it was a place of “wide lawns and narrow minds” in a letter to his sister begging her to leave Oak Park and experience the world. Leaving in his teens for Kansas, and later to the front lines of the Great War, Hemingway only returned a few times as a famished 20 year old to speak to small crowds about his overseas experiences before finally vanishing for good to become a cherished citizen of the world.

Though the list of his much romanticized residences reads like a Jim Varney filmography (Ernest Goes to Spain; Ernest Goes to Paris; Ernest Goes to Cuba; Ernest Goes to... you get the point), the fact remains that Hemingway is a Chicago-area writer. Born on July 21^st , 1899, to Dr. Clarence Hemmingway and Grace Hall-Hemingway, The young Ernest’s literally career could be argued began in Oak Park River Forest High School where he wrote for the school paper, The Trapeze. Yet it was his family vacations to their cabin in upstate Michigan, near the town of Petosky, that had lasting impressions on the young Hemingway, making a bulging cameo in his first collection of published short stories, In Our Time, where Chicago and Oak Park are practically left out in the cold.

However one shining sliver of acknowledgement appears at the end of his short story “A Very Short Story”, which revolves around the unfulfilled love of a young Italian nurse and an unnamed military officer she met as a patient.

“The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.”

CTA Loop

It’s a subtle reference, but it’ll have to do. Now Chicagoans will nod in recognition at the mention of the “loop”, or where Lincoln Park is located in Chicago’s geography. But to the uninitiated here’s a little primer: the Loop is the central node where all the lines of the CTA(Chicago Transit Authority) meet then  circle above the streets and through business district’s skyscrapers before shooting back out to their respective neighborhoods. This area is named thus because of the literal loop the El (Elevated Train) creates through downtown.

Arial View of Lincoln Park

Next, Lincoln Park is a neighborhood located north of downtown Chicago. An affluent neighborhood, it’s home to DePaul University and the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Me at Hemingway's birthplace

Though his descriptions of exotic places around the world whet the imaginary appetite much more than this passage, Hemingway found little need to consistently use Chicago as the primary backdrop of his fiction, unlike other writers we’ll discuss later. Yet the residence located at 339 N. Oak Park Ave, Oak Park Illinois holds the singular distinction of being the birthplace of one of the most beloved writers in history.

Note: If you discover other moments where Chicago appears in Hemingway’s writings, post a comment.