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"Letters from a Docent" by Dr. John W. Quinley. ENJOY!
Dr. John W. Quinley, a retired college administrator and faculty member, was raised in Maywood, Illinois, just a few blocks away from where Sandburg lived 30 years earlier. He served as a docent for Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site for several years, and is the author of Discovering Carl Sandburg: The Eclectic Life of an American Icon (2022). He and his wife, Melissa, live in Hendersonville, North Carolina, just a few miles from Sandburg's former home. _______________________________________________________
8 January 2024 #1
"Striking Workers" portion of California
Industrial Mural,
Poet of the People By John W. Quinley Dear
Readers, What do we
mean when someone describes Carl Sandburg as the poet of the people?
Sandburg’s people were the industrial workers of the early 1900s. Many
were immigrants from non-English speaking countries of
eastern, southern, and central Europe.
They labored in repetitive and monotonous jobs ten to twelve hours per day, six days a week,
with no vacations. Pay was so low that nearly half of working-class families
lived below the poverty line. If the breadwinner got injured or killed, there
was no governmental safety net to turn to—only the charity of family and friends
or the church. When labor
tried to organize, Congress and the courts intervened on the side of business
interests. Local, state, and federal forces squashed the efforts of striking
workers, often with the aid of ruthless private detective agencies like the
Pinkertons. Some believed that a working-class revolution was just around the
corner. Sandburg believed that the stories of these ordinary working people needed to be told— especially because they didn’t have a way to speak for themselves. He wrote plainly in their common speech (even slang) and used a kind of verse that was more accessible to workers than the traditional devices of rhymed poetry. He wrote from his own experience as a laborer and as a reporter covering labor, poverty, and crime. Danny Heitman (award-winning columnist and editor of the Phi Kappa Phi Forum) said, “Like his reportage, the poems often read like prose with a topical flare. They crackle with the authenticity of everyday experience, the texture of daily life…[with] the vividness and urgency of a morning headline."
Sandburg wrote not only about the struggles of the working class, but also about
their determination to overcome hardships and oppression. For him the word
“people” meant more than the powerless working class. He believed that the
people were both the bedrock and the movers of history. In his poem, “I Am the
People, the Mob,” he writes:
He then points out that while the people suffer, they forget who they are
as a collective. “Terrible storms
pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget.”
He concludes that the transformation of society
will come through a widespread awareness, a consciousness among the working
classes of their inherent power.
Both in his works and personal life, Sandburg
remained true to his reputation as the poet of the people. Although he achieved
great fame, he never abandoned his common, working-class roots.
John Quinley is the author of Discovering Carl
Sandburg: The Eclectic Life of an American Icon and is a former docent at
the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
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