carl sandburg.

The first two years of my formal education were spent at Carl Sandburg Elementary School in West Valley City, UT. I think, even in Kindergarten and First Grade, I was vaguely aware that Sandburg was a writer of some kind. Now 26 years removed from those opaque days of youth, I just finished reading Sandburg's Chicago Poems. Several things struck me upside the head while reading this book.

I wonder how on earth an elementary school in the Salt Lake Valley was named after an outspoken socialist. There seems to be some incongruity in a school located in the heart of our nation's most conservative state being named after a man that was integral in the American socialist movement of the early 20th century. I mean, he was the private secretary of Eugene V. Debs! I wonder if the school board knew he was the man that wrote

Voices of dollars
And drops of blood

Could they have known?

I wonder if there was a teacher in the entire school who knew who Sandburg was and what he stood for? I am not saying definitively no one knew, but given my basic knowledge of teachers today I am pretty doubtful. I know many elementary school teachers, I doubt they have read "Chicago". I doubt they had read "Fog"

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

Finally, I wonder if, in some way, I was meant to find Sandburg more than 25 years later. I don't particularly love him as a poet, or agree with his politics. However, in some small manner, I feel connected to his words. I did go to a school named after him, although I can't believe that in any way that school embodied the name above the door. There is always some lesson in the words of poets concerned with the topics of their day. As The Great War raged on he wrote:

JAWS

SEVEN nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death.
It was the first week in August, Nineteen Hundred Fourteen.
I was listening, you were listening, the whole world was listening,
And all of us heard a Voice murmuring:
“I am the way and the light,	5
He that believeth on me
Shall not perish
But shall have everlasting life.”
Seven nations listening heard the Voice and answered:
“O Hell!”	10
The jaws of death began clicking and they go on clicking.
“O Hell!”