The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Carl Sandburg, Poet of America This was a good idea—to bind up Carl Sandburg in one fat volume. It is called The Sandburg Range, contains 459 pages and can be...
...Like Whitman, he takes us all in...
...their faces here now, their lessons worth our seeing.' There is a nood deal of the flavor of the Chicago school about much of this writing...
...Chicago was destined to take the lead from New York, and the universities of the West would soon outshine Harvard and Yale...
...And in the reach of his mind there was nothing provincial...
...It never occurred to him that bad grammar or countrified vocabulary were symbols of strength...
...It is hard to remember how proud we Midwesterners used to be of our poets, our novelists, our humorists and columnists...
...When you look down the index of this bundle of selections, you see that we have here poetry, humor, folk tales, biography, history...
...It ties in all classes, all ages, all interests, all types and occupations...
...For me, this well-selected anthology has already served a special purpose...
...Remembrance Rock, of which 116 pages have been included, is the clearest and most forthright statement of what Carl thinks is necessary for the health and happiness of the nation...
...First Comers —thev go on...
...They lost sight of what brought them along...
...since reading this book...
...I have decided that I did my old friend wrong...
...The prairies produced him, but he far transcended them...
...But when you see some of his best work of each kind tight-packed in this Sandburg Range, you begin to sense that it is all of a piece...
...So Carl has written many things in many ways...
...And the deniers were heard...
...It is called The Sandburg Range, contains 459 pages and can be bought at the nearest bookstore for $6...
...Very few of our writers have produced so much and of such great variety...
...But when you see his works lightly bunched together like flowers in a bouquet, you realize that they have the same themes and purpose...
...The idea that runs through every line is that of the unity of mankind —especially of all American mankind...
...But the mockers came...
...It seemed as if he had the notion that by pulling Washington down a peg or two he could put Lincoln up...
...It starts in Plymouth back in the 17th century, takes in the Revolution and the Civil War, and comes to an end immediately after World War II...
...Like Walt Whitman, this sturdy Swede, born and bred in Galesburg, Illinois, has deep in his blood the consciousness of unity with all Americans from the beginning of our history and out to the farthest stretches of our geography...
...There was, it seemed to the Westerners, something phony and false about Eastern culture...
...When he burst out with "Hog-Butcher for the World," his immortal characterization of our Great Lakes metropolis, all of the West was proud...
...And vision faded...
...It was inevitable, of course, that Lincoln should become the embodiment of all that the prairie world held dear...
...When Justice Windom, in Remembrance Rock, sums everything up in his great radio address, he says: "When a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found...
...he is not a regional-ist...
...Or, at least, that happiness and progress depend on sticking to the principles which have been tested in the tough times of the past...
...From Plymouth to Chicago, there are always frontiers, dangers, challenges...
...They forgot where they came from...
...But it would have done the authors of the Chicago school good to recall that as he went on he developed a command of English speech of a classic purity and strength...
...If we are to be anything, produce anything, we must remember our ancestors and what they believed and did...
...Whatever lie is...
...Here was our own Whitman...
...Scorn of the East was a part of their creed...
...In the begining and in private, he spoke the frontier language...
...And a page or two further along: "Yet, there always arose enough of reserves of strength, balances of sanity, portions of wisdom, to carry the nation through to a fresh start with an ever renewing vitality...
...In my case, it is worth having despite the fact that most of my old friend's books are scattered over my shelves...
...This sounded like a reversion to the old Chicago days...
...If you stood before the row of volumes marshaled on a shelf, you might think that the man didn't know what he was driving at...
...To express what needs to be said about all these sorts of people, we need all sorts of writing...
...This impulse includes all of us—past, present and to come...
...As I read some of these stories and poems of old Carl, I am reminded of how the Chicagoans seemed to believe that bad grammar symbolized vigor and youthful originality...
...The other evening, as I listened while Carl answered questions on a popular television program, I was disturbed by what seemed like a deprecatory remark about George Washington...
...When I read the praises of Lincoln's peasant qualities, I wonder to what extent his admirers are able to follow the sweep of his mind...
...The author is sharply conscious of all the changes from age to age, of all the differences in techniques and ideas, but as you read along the feeling grows that these people are basically alike...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 49
