This is interesting, Mark. Sorry cannot respond more elaborately, or well,
or 'parse'. Got to 'nip' out of here to a designer and making book work.
You can still find parsnips in Sandburg, and rutabagas, too. Neither take
root in Frost, I suspect. Great for cold winterish mid-western soups. Sans
doute.
Stephen V
> There may be some interesting issues to parse here re: the term modernism
> and what we mean by it. I don't at the moment have much Sandburg in the
> house, but my impression is that he's as "modernist" as Stevens or Eliot
> (tho with far less irony in his long poems, at least) and has little to do
> with the regionalists you mention--he was poetically a revolutionary by US
> standards. The problem is that so much of his work seems sentimental to us
> now. The closest European equivalent I can think of for the Sandburg of
> the long poems is Peguy, whose work has similar problems.
>
> It's diffiult to remember how big a deal Sandburg was, as the great
> standard bearer for the new and the demotic, against Frost as the opposing
> knight.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 01:16 PM 12/22/2005, you wrote:
>> I am not sure the origins of this piece - but I have seen other work with a
>> modernist edge.
>> Midwest/Chicago USA - early on - has all these interesting figures -
>> Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, _ _ Robinson, among others who are
>> admirably public/populist but aren't dummies. Kenneth Rexroth - tho he went
>> west - a product of that world. Funny to think of Poetry Magazine having its
>> origins there, too. I don't know if the history has ever been written
>> fully, or well. Modernism took such a heavy leather strap to it all - T.S.
>> Eliot rising above those sloppy mud filled St. Louis origins, etc. A
>> Mandarin gentility versus those who 'stayed home.'
>> Interesting to think of Bob Dylan - another mid-westerner - reaping great
>> material from both the mid-sections and the south - where the 'genteels'
>> refused to tread. A certain kind of courage for those who stay home and a
>> benefit. Think of Twain, Faulkner, as well, I do.
>>
>> Stephen V
>>
>>
>>> That's excellent. Sandburg's stock seems very low currently --
>>> unfortunately his best known poems tend to be those which exemplify his
>>> callowness -- so it's good to be reminded that he could do things like
>> this.
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