"City of the Big Shoulders" (or, Duke Altum's POTW #37)

YOU KNOW, for the past week or so now I've been thinking to myself that I wanted to post some thoughts about my home city: Chicago. I only lived there for the first five years of my life, so people tend to scoff or laugh when I refer to it as my "home city;" however, it is where things began for me, and not only that, but is the place that at least half of my extended family comes from, where my Dad worked for years and my parents first established our household, and where so many of the roots that anchor the tree from which I am but a small fruit have long since taken hold in this great land...

Anyway, the occasion for such thoughts is just the reading I have been doing lately, having just finished a massive history of Chicago (Donald Miller's fascinating and entertaining City of the Century) and being currently immersed in one of the great novels to come out of the Windy City, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March (perhaps Theodore Dreiser's classic Sister Carrie is the only tale that would beat it in the race to be named the "great Chicago novel"). Inspired by these books and the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head for weeks now about this great, teeming, historic, quintessentially American city, I thought I would just write some rambling reflections about the place, and my interest in it...

But then, as it was getting to be time to select another Poem of the Week anyway, I was thumbing through a book I recently received from Mutt as a gift, a small collection of poems from the great American Bard of the Midwest, Carl Sandburg... and I came across his famous poem about the city, simply called "Chicago." And I realized that it captured perfectly the impressions that have been swirling around in my head, and is a wonderful portrait of the hardscrabble, vivacious spirit and history of this city that many have a called a "metaphor for America." It almost serves as a Cliff Notes version of the history I just read! So rather than attempt to re-invent the wheel... I give you his vivid snapshot of this great city, "my city," the City of the Big Shoulders... long may you prosper there by the shores of Lake Michigan, "alive and course and strong and cunning," with "lifted head singing for all to hear"!


*******

Chicago

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.