Poems of an Earlier America in Carl Sandburg’s Poetry for Young People - Learning from Children’s Books Part 3

On October 31, many homes around the world have carved pumpkins lit by small, fat candles at opened front doors. As children dressed in frightening masks and costumes arrive to boldly say, “Trick or Treat!,” mock-terrified family members put apples or candy in the paper bags opened by outstretched hands. This night, named Halloween, occurs on the eve of All Saints’ Day and is thought to have its origin in the Celtic festival, Samhain, when ghosts and spirits were believed to be abroad.*Here is the last stanza of Sandburg’s “Theme in Yellow” about pumpkins turned into jack o’ lanterns—and I am still fooled.

     I am a jack-o’-lantern
     With terrible teeth
     And the children know
     I am fooling.

I believe my first awareness of Sandburg came from my mother; she didn’t read his poetry to me, but when I was young I remember her occasionally referring to him. Only when returning to memories of my younger days as I wrote A Flower for God did it occur to me that when she gave poetry recitations in high school, with Sandburg born in 1878 and her in 1917, his works could well have been among her selections. I’m grateful for her early references to him as his is one of my few books brought from America.

I have learned about my country from Sandburg’s poetry in images that are strong, whether they are personal or of the history of our land and its people. Of a lone bird he writes, “Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults / Of night and the sea / And the stars and storms,” taking my own aloneness into a new realm. Through his gift of seeing people through nature I read,

     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.

When have I looked at a face in this way? But I am now opened to. And, “Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they/ pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs,/ their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dust,/Those who saw the buffaloes are gone. …” teaches me more than a book’s bland sentence—for I see and hear them, and choke on the dust.*

My realization is, “The young people’s poetry of Carl Sandburg may activate our senses, open a closed cavity in our mind—and we may grow from it, just as may the children it’s intended for.”

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

“All Saints' Day … is a festival celebrated on 1 November by the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church and some other Western Christian traditions ... in honour of all the saints, known and unknown.”

* “Halloween activities include trick-or-treating …, attending Halloween costume parties, decorating [and] carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing and divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories and watching horror films.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day

* All excerpts from Carl Sandburg, Poetry for Young People. Illustrated (NY: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. 1995)