View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M University RECOVERING CARL SANDBURG: POLITICS, PROSE, AND POETRY AFTER 1920 A Dissertation by EVERT VILLARREAL Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2006 Major Subject: English RECOVERING CARL SANDBURG: POLITICS, PROSE, AND POETRY AFTER 1920 A Dissertation by EVERT VILLARREAL Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, William Bedford Clark Committee Members, Clinton J. Machann Marco A. Portales David Vaught Head of Department, Paul A. Parrish August 2006 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Recovering Carl Sandburg: Politics, Prose, and Poetry After 1920. (August 2006) Evert Villarreal, B.A., The University of Texas-Pan American; M.A., The University of Texas-Pan American Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. William Bedford Clark Chapter I of this study is an attempt to articulate and understand the factors that have contributed to Carl Sandburg’s declining trajectory, which has led to a reputation that has diminished significantly in the twentieth century. I note that from the outset of his long career of publication – running from 1904 to 1963 – Sandburg was a literary outsider despite (and sometimes because of) his great public popularity though he enjoyed a national reputation from the early 1920s onward. Chapter II clarifies how Carl Sandburg, in various ways, was attempting to re- invent or re-construct American literature. Indeed, beginning in 1922, a very complex creative imagination – one not seen before – began to manifest itself in Sandburg’s works. As a result, readers begin to see how Sandburg’s view of the role of the writer was shifting – from one of a radical political poet into one of a writer who experimented with several genres. Chapter III examines the two separately published biographies of Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) – and reveals how Sandburg incorporates a new perspective that was radically different from the Lincoln biographies that preceded it. iv Chapter IV turns to Sandburg’s celebration of the theme of “the People.” The chapter explores four works – The American Songbag (1927), Good Morning, America (1928), The People, Yes (1936), and Remembrance Rock (1948). These works, like all of his previous works, are an effort to make life possible to the common man. Finally, Chapter V reminds readers of Sandburg’s stature as witness to the labor problem – perhaps the most significant problem of the twentieth century. I argue that the only way to recover Sandburg correctly is to assess the political ideology present in each of his published works. v DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my wife, Isabel, my son, Matthew, and my parents, Sabas and Betty A. Villarreal. Isabel has been there every step of the way, and she has been an ever-patient and loving wife. My son Matthew was born at the outset of the writing of the dissertation, and he has been and will remain an inspiring force in my professional and personal life. Everyone above provided the necessary support to see me through the writing of this dissertation, which often felt like a Sisyphean task. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. William Bedford Clark, who has been a true mentor. His seminar on 19th- and 20th-Century American Poetry provided the foundations for this study and further ignited my passion for the study of American literature. His uncompromising high standards have made me a much stronger critical thinker, a stronger writer, and a better person. He has also provided me with a model of what college teaching and college scholarship should aim to accomplish. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Marco Portales for his many incisive comments at every stage of the writing, as well as Dr. Clinton Machann and Dr. David Vaught from the Department of History at Texas A&M University. I want to acknowledge all of the members of my dissertation committee for their guidance, patience, committed support, and encouragement. Dale Salwak’s Carl Sandburg: A Reference Guide has shown me that bibliography is an essential part of research, and his work on Sandburg often gave me necessary perspective and insight regarding the shifting critical assessments of Carl Sandburg. I must also thank Paulette Bomnskie, who often went out of her way to keep me on-track as I worked my way through the Ph.D. program at Texas A&M University. I also want to thank the entire English Department at Texas A&M and the many professors who made me a much stronger student and teacher, especially Dr. Howard Marchitello, Dr. James Harner, Dr. Valerie Balester, Dr. Larry Reynolds, Dr. David McWhirter, Dr. Susan Stabile, Dr. Terence Hoagwood, Dr. Dennis Berthold, Dr. Kimberly Brown, and Dr. Joanna Gibson. vii Finally, I would like to thank Department of English at The University of Texas- Pan American for providing me with a supportive academic environment as I worked my way through this project. I especially want to thank Dr. Lee T. Hamilton. Finally, a poem by Robert Frost reminded me that writing is long and solitary work. I read it every morning and night before and after I would sit and write. It taught me that there is no such thing as “easy gold at the hand of fay or elf” and equally important, that “the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows”: “Mowing” There was never a sound beside the wood but one, And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound – And that was why it whispered and did not speak. It was no dream of the gift of idle hours, Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers, (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make. (Untermeyer, Pocket Book 91) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT............................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION........................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: “TWO MEN SPEAK IN MR. SANDBURG, A POET AND A PROPAGANDIST: HIS FUTURE WILL DEPEND UPON WHICH FINALLY DOMINATES THE OTHER”............... 1 II SANDBURG’S NATION-BUILDING: “I WANTED SOMETHING MORE IN THE AMERICAN LINGO. I WAS TIRED OF PRINCES AND PRINCESSES AND I SOUGHT THE AMERICAN EQUIVALENT OF ELVES AND GNOMES” ................................. 39 III A NEW TYPE OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY: RESITUATING LINCOLN’S PLACE IN AMERICAN HISTORY............................ 83 IV TRANSCONTINENTAL POET: CARL SANDBURG CELEBRATES THE COMMON MAN AND AMERICA’S STORY .............................................................................................. 120 V CONCLUSION.................................................................................. 173 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 181 VITA.......................................................................................................................... 189 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: “TWO MEN SPEAK IN MR. SANDBURG, A POET AND A PROPAGANDIST: HIS FUTURE WILL DEPEND UPON WHICH FINALLY DOMINATES THE OTHER” No one will get at my verses who insists on viewing them as a literary performance. -Walt Whitman (from “A Backward Glance”) You ask me to belong to something. You wish me to join a movement or party or church and subscribe to a creed and a program. It would be easy to do this. It is the line of least resistance. If I have a fixed, unchangeable creed then I am saved the trouble every day of forming a new creed dictated by the events of the day. If I have a program and a philosophy and a doctrine, crystalyzed [sic] in an organized movement, then the movement is supposed to do for me what I ought to do for myself. -Letter from Carl Sandburg to Romain Rolland (October, 1919) reprinted in Hebert Mitgang’s The Letters of Carl Sandburg The title of this chapter comes from the opening lines of Amy Lowell’s review of Carl Sandburg’s third volume of poetry titled Smoke and Steel published in 1920. The review was titled “Poetry and Propaganda,” and it appeared in The New York Times on October 24th of that year. Amy Lowell begins by writing: Two men speak in Mr. Sandburg, a poet and a propagandist. His future ________________________ The style of this dissertation follows the MLA Handbook (1999). 2 will depend on which finally dominates the other. Since a poet must speak by means of suggestion and a propagandist succeeds by virtue of clear presentation, in so far as a propagandist is a poet, just in that ratio is he a failure where his propaganda is concerned. On the other hand, the poet who leaves the proper sphere of his art to preach, even by analogy, must examine the mote in his verse very carefully lest, perchance, it turn out a beam. (qtd. in Marowski 340) She goes on to voice a concern about Sandburg’s work when she announces with ominous certainty: “Then [in 1917] I had only one book to go upon [Chicago Poems], now I have three, and the danger seems to me to be looming larger with terrific speed” (qtd. in Marowski 340). With incredible accuracy and impressive foresight, in these statements Amy Lowell – pointing out Carl Sandburg’s allegiance to both art and propaganda – foreshadows the dilemma that would plague him during his entire career.