We don’t exactly have a house full of poetry here. In fact, what we’ve got here is slim pickin’s. From our upstairs bookshelves I had a choice of two: War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon or Harvest Poems by Carl Sandburg. Hmm, war or harvest? I went with the harvest.
And guess what? Harvest Poems is a page-turner. Who knew? Sandburg reminds me of Woody Guthrie. Very similar themes, imagery, etc.
Anyway, here’s one that grabbed me right away. It’s about something that I ponder constantly: the animal-ness of human beings.
Wilderness
There is a wolf in me…fangs pointed for tearing gashes…a red tongue for raw meat…and the hot lapping of blood — I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me…a silver-gray fox…I sniff and guess…I pick things out of the wind and air…I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers…I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me…a snout and a belly…a machinery for eating and grunting…a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun — I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me…I know I came from salt-blue water-gates…I scurried with shoals of herring…I blew waterspouts with porpoises…before land was…before the water went down…before Noah…before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me…clambering-clawed…dog-faced…yawping a galoot’s hunger…hairy under the armpits…here are the hawk-eyed hankering men…here are the blonde and blue-eyed women…here they hide curled asleep waiting…ready to snarl and kill…ready to sing and give milk…waiting — I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird…and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want…and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes — And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart — and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where — For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
8 Comments
I just read Sandburg’s “Fog” with my 7th graders. We know what personification is, but is metaphor the only term for turning a person into an animal?
[On a related note, did you know that meleagrine is the adjective form of turkey? I used that word in a letter to the editor last year.]
With the 7th graders, I also used one of Sandburg’s definitions of poetry to enliven a discussion of students’ perceptions and associations with poetry. Sandburg said, “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”
Hi Sara! :)
Your comment threw me for a loop for a minute there, because when I said “the animal-ness of human beings” I actually meant it literally, not metaphorically. “The wilderness will not let it go” — we may blather on about mind over matter, or whatever, but we are flesh and blood and we must eat and “sleep satisfied in the sun”; and we do have hairy armpits like our baboon cousins. But of course you are absolutely right. We don’t just have hairy armpits. We also have metaphors. :)
And thanks for meleagrine. I didn’t know. Dare I ask what the letter was about?
And thanks for hyacincths and biscuits — what a great quote. Someone (hint hint) should start a poetry blog with that title.
I admit, my metaphor comment was a bit on the cryptic side – I should have re-read “Wilderness” with fresh eyes and should not have rushed to type while getting ready for work. Sandburg is not using metaphors here: you’re right.
In “Fog,” however, he compares a fog bank to a cat. Maybe I should have asked, if “personification” can have it’s own literary term, shouldn’t there also be “catification”?
My meleagrine letter was one of several dozen letters sent to our local daily paper, “The Berkshire Eagle,” regarding two wild turkeys that had been shot by the police because they were considered to be a traffic hazard. Because the incident had ignited such interest by Eagle reporters, editorial writers, and readers, I couldn’t resist calling attention to the bias that this aquiline newspaper was showing toward its meleagrine friends.
Maybe there’s a turkey in me. . . .
Catification, absolutely. Turkification, too. Or should I say meleagrinification? Maybe you could put these on your next pop quiz, heh heh.
Thanks for introducting me to “meleagrine” (who knew that there was even an adjectival form for turkey?) and reminding me of “aquiline”.
At first I thought of “anthropomorphism” for the word Aunt Sarah is looking for, but that isn’t quite right either since it’s giving human characteristics to animals. And “animalistic” is only applied to humans. So maybe it should be “catification”.
I grabbed a few copy of the Dover thrift edition of Sandburg’s “Chicago Poems” off the swap rack at the Saline library a few months ago, and was surprised at how modern it seemed. Even the famous “Hog Butcher for the world” poem is better than I remembered (if indeed I ever read the whole thing before).
Nice to see you posting again, Julie!
I haven’t read much poetry, except in school, and that under duress. Except the Shakespeare sonnets, and other Shakespeare, if you consider that poetry. But recently I have also started to develop an interest, since I’ve come across a few poems that have knocked me back in a way I haven’t encountered in prose. I’m actually going to see Billy Collins next month–who would have thought that could ever happen? I haven’t read any Sandburg. But I do like the one you posted, and at my recent trip to the zoo I was watching a chinpanzee get comfy sleeping, and the way it moved its hand under its head was uncannily human. Or we are uncannily chimplike.