The Sandburg Treasury

by Carl Sandburg

  She was quick and wild, the lumber king’s daughter. She had never kissed. Not her mother nor father nor any sweetheart ever had a love print from her lips. Proud she was. They called her Kiss Me.

  She didn’t like that name, Kiss Me. They never called her that when she was listening. If she happened to be listening, they called her Find Me, Lose Me, Get Me. They never mentioned kisses because they knew she would run away and be what her father called her, “a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning.”

  But—when she was not listening, they asked, “Where is Kiss Me today?” Or they would say, “Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful—I wonder if she will ever in her young life get a kiss from a man good enough to kiss her.”

  One day Kiss Me was lost. She went out on a horse with a gun to hunt wildcats in the timbers nearby. Since the day before, she was gone. All night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting wildcats. And the storm of the blowing snow was coming worse on the second day.

  It was then the lumber king called in a long, loose young man with a leather face and hay in his hair. And the king said, “Flax Eyes, you are the laziest careless man in the river lumber country—go out in the snowstorm now, among the wildcats, where Kiss Me is fighting for her life, and save her.”

  “I am the hero. I am the man who knows how. I am the man who has been waiting for this chance,” said Flax Eyes.

  On a horse, with a gun, out into the snowstorm Flax Eyes rode that day. Far, far away he rode to where Kiss Me, the quick, wild Kiss Me, was standing with her back against a big rock fighting off the wildcats.

  In that country the snowstorms make the wildcats wilder—and Kiss Me was tired of shooting wildcats, tired of fighting in the snow, nearly ready to give up and let the wildcats have her.

  Then Flax Eyes came. The wildcats jumped at him, and he threw them off. More wildcats came, jumping straight at his face. He took hold of those wildcats by the necks and threw them over the big rock, up into the trees, away into the snow and the wind.

  At last he took all the wildcats one by one and threw them so far they couldn’t come back. He put Kiss Me on her horse, rode back to the lumber king, and said, lazy and careless, “This is us.”

  The lumber king saw the face of Flax Eyes was all covered with cross marks like the letter X. And the lumber king saw the wildcats had torn the shirt off Flax Eyes, and on the skin of his chest, shoulders, arms, were the cross marks of the wildcats’ claws, cross marks like the letter X.

  So the king went to the men who change the alphabets, and they put the cross marks of the wildcats’ claws for a new letter, the letter X, near the end of the alphabet. And at the wedding of Kiss Me and Flax Eyes, the men who change the alphabets came with wildcat claws crossed like the letter X.

  BLUE SILVER

  LONG AGO WHEN the years were dark and the black rains used to come with strong winds and blow the front porches off houses, and pick chimneys off houses and blow them onto other houses, long ago when people had understanding about rain and wind, there was a rich man with a daughter he loved better than anything else in the world.

  And one night when the black rain came with a strong wind blowing off front porches and picking off chimneys, the daughter of the rich man fell asleep into a deep sleep.

  In the morning they couldn’t wake her. The black rain with the strong wind kept up all that day while she kept on sleeping in a deep sleep.

  Men and women with music and flowers came in, boys and girls, her playmates, came in—singing songs and calling her name. And she went on sleeping.

  All the time her arms were crossed on her breast, the left arm crossing the right arm like a letter X.

  Two days more, five days, six, seven days went by—and all the time the black rain with a strong wind blowing—and the daughter of the rich man never woke up to listen to the music nor to smell the flowers nor to hear her playmates singing songs and calling her name.

  She stayed sleeping in a deep sleep—with her arms crossed on her breast—the left arm crossing the right arm like a letter X.

  So they made a long silver box, just long enough to reach from her head to her feet.

  And they put on her a blue silver dress and a blue silver band around her forehead and blue silver shoes on her feet.

  There were soft blue silk and silver sleeves to cover her left arm and her right arm—the two arms crossed on her breast like the letter X.

  They took the silver box and carried it to a corner of the garden where she used to go to look at blue lilacs and climbing blue morning glories in patches of silver lights.

  Among the old leaves of blue lilacs and morning glories they dug a place for the silver box to be laid in.

  And men and women with music and flowers stood by the silver box, and her old playmates singing songs she used to sing—and calling her name.

  When it was all over and they all went away, they remembered one thing most of all.

  And that was her arms in the soft silk and blue silver sleeves, the left arm crossing over the right arm like the letter X.

  Somebody went to the king of the country and told him how it all happened, how the black rains with a strong wind came, the deep sleep, the singing playmates, the silver box—and the soft silk and blue silver sleeves on the left arm crossing the right arm like the letter X.

  Before that there never was a letter X in the alphabet. It was then the king said, “We shall put the crossed arms in the alphabet; we shall have a new letter called X, so everybody will understand a funeral is beautiful if there are young singing playmates.”

  Early Moon

  Short Talk on Poetry

  with different kinds of explanations for young people as to how little anybody knows about poetry, how it is made, what it is made of, how long men have been making it, where it came from, when it began, who started it and why, and who knows all about it.

  WHAT IS POETRY? Is the answer hidden somewhere? Is it one of those answers locked in a box and nobody has the key? There are such questions and answers.

  Once a man reading a newspaper clipped a poem written by a small boy in a school in New York City. The lines read:

  There stands the elephant.

  Bold and strong—

  There he stands chewing his food.

  We are strengthless against his strength.

  And the man has kept this poem for many years. He has a feeling the boy did a good, honest piece of writing. The boy stood wondering and thinking before the biggest four-legged animal on earth today. And the boy put his wonder and thought, his personal human secret, a touch of man’s fear in the wilderness, into the nineteen words of the poem. He asked, “What does the elephant do to me when I look at him? What is my impression of the elephant?” Then he answered his own questions.

  Once there was a boy went to school and learned that any two-legged animal is a biped. And he said, “Here I’ve been a biped all the time and I didn’t know it.” So there are people sometimes who talk poetry without writing it but they don’t know they are talking poetry. And every child, every boy and girl, sometimes has poetry in his head and heart—even though it doesn’t get written.

  Once there was a wee, curly-headed boy tugged at a cornstalk, tugged till he pulled the cornstalk up all by himself and told about it to his father, who said, “I guess you’re getting to be a pretty strong boy now.” The little one answered, “I guess I am. The whole earth had a hold of the other end of the cornstalk and was pulling against me.” Should we say this boy had imagination and what he told his father was so keen and alive it could be called poetry? Perhaps he was a poet without knowing it just like the boy who was a biped without knowing it.

  Poetry is old, ancient, goes far back. It is among the oldest of human things. So old is it that no man knows how and why the first poems came.

  When it shall happen sometime that men gather their gifts and go to work and write a history of language, then it may be that we shall have at the same time a hi
story of poetry. For the first poems of man probably came about the same time the first men, women and children spoke the first human words on the earth.

  Is anyone surprised to hear that we do not have a history of poetry? Shall we believe that the learned men have written histories of all the important things of mankind? Surely there are many big histories yet to be written on big subjects. We do not have, for instance, a history of Money that goes back to when money first began, telling how and why. We do not have a history of Language which goes far back, telling how and why men first began to talk.

  Yes, poetry is old. The first men that walked the earth, before men had learned to write, must have talked poetry to each other sometimes. Among the oldest things we have today which tell us about the Indians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, how they lived and talked, thousands of years ago, are writings we know to be poetry. These writings have words that go along with timebeats, with rhythm, one-two, one-two, or one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. They had drums among the Indians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, thousands of years ago. And the words of their poetry move along like drum-beats, keeping time, now fast, now slow, drumming easy and slow at the opening of a war dance, drumming faster and faster, wild and furious, till it is so swift only the best-trained warriors can stand the speed of the dance that is drummed.

  We have old poems, some so old no man knows how far they go back in time. One beautiful ancient English poem has no author, whose name we know. Where it came from no history books tell us. It goes like this—

  On a misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather,

  I chanced to meet an old man all clothed in leather.

  He began to compliment and I began to grin,

  “How do you do? and how do you do? and how do you do again?”

  This is only one of many fine and strange poems we have out of the long ago. Nobody knows who wrote them or whether they were first spoken centuries before they were written down to meet our eyes in books.

  What is poetry? This question no man has ever answered in such a way that all men have said, “Yes, now we know what poetry is.” Many men have tried to explain what poetry is. Some men have written thick books so the question might be settled and made clear for all time. But they have all failed. Several fine poets have written essays and papers on what they believe poetry to be. Yet these poets did not do what they started out to do. They meant to explain in prose what poetry is, and they ended up with writing poetry to explain poetry. This is like a man inside of a strange house trying to tell people outside who have never been in the house exactly how it feels to be in that house, which is not scientific nor exact and which is like saying, “The way to write poems is to write poems.” It is only clear and understandable to those who already understand and therefore need no explanations.

  When Walt Whitman says, “The poet is the answerer,” we are interested. If we could know just what he means by “the answerer” we would know what he means by “the poet.” One poet says poetry must be “cold, lonely and distant,” not knowing that some readers of poetry are glad to have books which are warm, friendly and so near that they almost breathe with life. Another poet has said poetry is “emotion remembered in tranquillity.” What does that mean? It is anybody’s guess what that means. To know exactly what it means we would have to know exactly what is emotion, what is tranquillity, and what we do when we remember. Otherwise it is an escape from words into words, “passing the buck,” or winding like a weasel through language that ends about where it begins. “He came out of the same hole he went in at.”

  There is a science called “esthetics.” It is the science which tries to find the laws of beauty. If as a science it ever became perfect then the books dealing with that science would become very important. Then when a builder finished a house and wished to know whether it was a beautiful house, he would only have to open the books on esthetics and the books would tell him.

  What is beauty? And when shall we call a thing beautiful? These, too, are questions no man has ever answered in such a way that all men have said, “Yes, now we know what beauty is and now we know how to tell the beautiful when we find it.” The nearest that men have come to answering the question, “What is the beautiful?” has been in their saying the beautiful is the appropriate, that which serves. No hat is a beautiful hat which does not fit you and which the wind can easily blow off your head. A Five-gallon Hat on a cowboy riding a horse on an Arizona ranch is beautiful—but the same hat on a crowded city street car would be out of place, inappropriate. No song is beautiful in a room where persons desire complete quiet. No polite behavior has beauty unless it has thought and consideration for others. The most beautiful room is the one which best serves those who live in it.

  The most beautiful skyscrapers are those without extras stuck on after the real structure is finished. Why should a good, honest skyscraper have a dome or a mosque or a cement wedding cake plastered on top of it? Nearly always, what serves, what is appropriate to human use, is beautiful enough—without extras. A farm silo, a concrete grain elevator, a steel barge hauling iron ore on the Great Lakes, or a series of tall coal chutes rising as silhouettes on a moonlight night, may any one of them have as complete a beauty as the Greek Parthenon or a Gothic cathedral. Steichen, the photographer, declares he occasionally meets newspaper photographs which in design and as works of art are superior to many of the proclaimed masterpieces of painting and etching.

  Now, poetry is supposed to be the esthetic art which gathers the beautiful into words. The first stuff for making poetry is words. No poems, strictly speaking, have ever been made without words. To make poems without words would be like a painter painting without paint or a bricklayer bricklaying without bricks. Of course, a feeling or a thought, or both must come to a poet before he begins using the words that make a poem. But the right words, the special and particular words for the purpose in view, these must come. For out of them the poem is made.

  The words for a poem sometimes come swiftly and easily so that at last when the poem is put down on paper, the writer of them says, “I do not know how these words came. What is here was not my own absolute doing any more than a dream that should come to me in a night of sleep.” Yet again the words may come slowly, out of years of toil and sometimes anguish of changing phrases and arrangements.

  While we do not know very much in an absolute way about the questions, “What is poetry? How is a poem made?” we do know the one little fact that poems are made of words and without words there can be no poetry. Beyond this we do not know much. However, there is one other little scientific fact we know about poetry. That is, what is poetry for any given individual depends on the individual and what his personality requires as poetry. This links up with one of the few accepted propositions of the science of esthetics: Beauty depends on personal taste. What is beauty for one person is not for another. What is poetry for one person may be balderdash or hogwash for another.

  Each of us has a personality different from all others. It has even been said that as no two leaves in a forest are the same no two human characters are precisely alike. This personality that each of us has is strangely woven of millions of little facts, events, impressions out of the past and present. Your personality and mine go back to many mysterious human connections before we were born—and since. And what any one of us loves today with depth of passion, and what each of us tries to shape his life by, goes back to strange things in personality, things so darkly mixed and baffling that it is not easy for any of us at a given time to answer the question, “Why do you love this and not that? Why do you want those and not them?” The old song with its line, “I want what I want when I want it,” is not entirely comic in its backgrounds.

  We do not know the start of the old folk saying, “Every one to his taste as the old woman said when she kissed the cow.” We are sure a blunt Indiana philosopher knew his ground well when he wrote, “What is one man’s lettuce is another man’s poison ivy.” These are humorous comme
nts on the deeply serious and involved reality known as human personality. They connect directly with the fact that what is poetry for some is not poetry for others. They indicate that sometimes we cannot help it that we do not merely dislike some poetry; we go farther and hate it. And why we should hate any particular poem, thing or person is no more clear than why we love others, for hate is usually expensive in many ways and is a waste of time that belongs elsewhere. Charles Lamb said he believed an old story he had heard about two men, who had never before seen each other, meeting one day in a street in London—and the moment they saw each other’s faces they leaped and began fighting.

  Lamb said those two men who began hitting at each other’s faces the moment they saw those faces, had “imperfect sympathies.” Something clicked in each one saying, “Hit him! Kill him!” They couldn’t help it. Though they met in a crowded street of a great city, and there was no war on, they attacked each other like two soldiers with bayonets in front-line trenches.

  And exactly like those two men meeting in a London street, some of us register instantly—though not so violently—to faces we meet, buildings, colors, neckties, gowns, designs, pictures, books, plays—and poems. Something clicks in us and we know like a flash whether we like this or that new thing we meet for the first time.

  And then may happen afterward a slow change of our viewpoint. What we saw nothing in to begin with takes on a glint or two we had not noticed at first; then as time passes, we gather values, intentions, gleams, that interest us and lead us on till we know we were ignorant, possessed of “imperfect sympathies,” in our first impression of hate or dislike. This change of viewpoint from dislike to interest, from indifference to enthusiasm, often has happened with the finest of men and women in respect to great masterpieces of literature. Sometimes we do not know what a writer is talking about in his books because in life we have not met the people, facts, impressions which he is trying to deliver his mind and heart about in his book. Said a great modern artist, “Going along a railroad one day I see a thing I have seen many times. But this day I suddenly see. ’Tisn’t that you see new, but things have prepared you for a new vision.”