The People, Yes

Carl Sandburg

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780156716659
• eBook ISBN: 9780544416925
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The acclaimed epic prose-poem from one of America's greatest poets and the three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
A long poem that makes brilliant use of the legends and myths, the tall tales and sayings of America. As Irish poet Padraic Colum said, "The fine thing about The People, Yes is that it is indubitable speech. Here is a man speaking, a man who knows all sorts and conditions of men, who can be wise and witty, stirring and nonsensical with them all. Carl Sandburg is a master of his own medium; he can deliver himself with the extraordinary clarity of the comic strip caption, with the punch of the tip-top editorial, with the jingle of the American ballad. If America has a folksinger today he is Carl Sandburg, a singer who comes out of the prairie soil, who has the prairie inheritance, who can hand back to the people a creation that has scraps of their own insight, humor, and imagination, a singer, it should be added, who both says and sings . . . He has a passion that gives dignity to all he says. It is a passion for humanity, not merely for the man with depths of personality in him, but for the ordinary man and woman . . . The People, Yes is his most appealing volume."
Praise for Carl Sandburg
"A poetic genius whose creative power has in no way lessened with the passing years." — Chicago Tribune
"Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America." — President Lyndon B. Johnson

1

From the four corners of the earth,

from corners lashed in wind

and bitten with rain and fire,

from places where the winds begin

and fogs are born with mist children,

tall men from tall rocky slopes came

and sleepy men from sleepy valleys,

their women tall, their women sleepy,

with bundles and belongings,

with little ones babbling, “Where to now?

      what next?”

 

The people of the earth, the family of man,

wanted to put up something proud to look at,

a tower from the flat land of earth

on up through the ceiling into the top of the sky.

 

      And the big job got going,

      the caissons and pilings sunk,

      floors, walls and winding staircases

      aimed at the stars high over,

      aimed to go beyond the ladders of the moon.

 

      And God Almighty could have struck them dead

      or smitten them deaf and dumb.

 

      And God was a whimsical fixer.

      God was an understanding Boss

      with another plan in mind,

 

And suddenly shuffled all the languages,

        changed the tongues of men

        so they all talked different

And the masons couldn’t get what the hodcarriers said,

The helpers handed the carpenters the wrong tools,

Five hundred ways to say, “W h o   a r e   y o u?”

Changed ways of asking, “Where do we go from here?”

Or of saying, “Being born is only the beginning,”

Or, “Would you just as soon sing as make that noise?”

Or, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

And the material-and-supply men started disputes

With the hauling gangs and the building trades

And the architects tore their hair over the blueprints

And the brickmakers and the mule skinners talked back

To the straw bosses who talked back to the superintendents

And the signals got mixed; the men who shovelled the bucket

Hooted the hoisting men—and the job was wrecked.

 

Some called it the Tower of Babel job

And the people gave it many other names.

The wreck of it stood as a skull and a ghost,

a memorandum hardly begun,

swaying and sagging in tall hostile winds,

held up by slow friendly winds.

2

From Illinois and Indiana came a later myth

Of all the people in the world at Howdeehow

For the first time standing together:

From six continents, seven seas, and several archipelagoes,

From points of land moved by wind and water

Out of where they used to be to where they are,

The people of the earth marched and travelled

To gather on a great plain.

 

At a given signal they would join in a shout,

      So it was planned,

One grand hosannah, something worth listening to.

      And they all listened.

      The signal was given.

      And they all listened.

      And the silence was beyond words.

They had come to listen, not to make a noise.

      They wanted to hear.

So they all stood still and listened,

Everybody except a little old woman from Kalamazoo

Who gave out a long slow wail over what she was missing

      because she was stone deaf.

 

This is the tale of the Howdeehow powpow,

One of a thousand drolls the people tell of themselves,

Of tall corn, of wide rivers, of big snakes,

Of giants and dwarfs, heroes and downs,

Grown in the soil of the mass of the people.

3

In the long fiat panhandle of Texas

far off on the grassland of the cattle country

near noon they sight a rider coming toward them

and the sky may be a cold neverchanging gray

or the sky may be changing its numbers

back and forth all day even and odd numbers

and the afternoon slides away somewhere

and they see their rider i...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• 28
• 29
• 30
• 31
• 32
• 33
• 34
• 35
• 36
• 37
• 38
• 39
• 40
• 41
• 42
• 43
• 44
• 45
• 46
• 47
• 48
• 49
• 50
• 51
• 52
• 53
• 54
• 55
• 56
• 57
• 58
• 59
• 60
• 61
• 62
• 63
• 64
• 65
• 66
• 67
• 68
• 69
• 70
• 71
• 72
• 73
• 74
• 75
• 76
• 77
• 78
• 79
• 80
• 81
• 82
• 83
• 84
• 85
• 86
• 87
• 88
• 89
• 90
• 91
• 92
• 93
• 94
• 95
• 96
• 97
• 98
• 99
• 100
• 101
• 102
• 103
• 104
• 105
• 106
• 107
• About the Author