A Christmas Poem By Carl Sandburg: “Star Silver”

Giotto di Bondone’s “The Flight Into Egypt” (c. 1305-06).

It’s been a long time since I’ve featured a poem here on buckeyemuse.com. I’m working on a series of posts about Sherwood Anderson in Elyria that began a couple of years ago along with some other material, but I’ve been wanting to do some shorter posts. Something I did occasionally in the early days of my blog was feature a Christmas-themed poem, so I thought I would do this again while working on these longer pieces. This time around I’ve chosen Carl Sandburg’s “Star Silver.”

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was one of the most popular twentieth century American poets. He reached a wide audience with his accessible free verse and his multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was an easily recognizable figure with his shock of white hair, rumpled, workingman poet look, and easygoing style. He also played the guitar and sang folk songs.

Carl Sandburg. In addition to his poetry and other written works, he played guitar and song folk songs. He also collected American folk songs and published two volumes of them. (Image: National Park Service).

It seems safe to say that Sandburg, along with his peer Robert Frost, typified the poet for many mid-century Americans. Both men had a kind of archetypal sage-like aspect about them that attracted large audiences to their readings. Each man also reflected the experience of an older, more rural America strongly tied to region: Frost to New England and Sandburg to the Midwest.

Robert Frost in 1941.

But they were very different. Frost was dismissive of free verse and was politically conservative. Sandburg wrote free verse, some of which reflected urban life, was a Socialist, and worked in other forms—aside from his six-volume biography of Abe Lincoln, he also wrote an autobiography and a novel. He worked for many years as a reporter while writing his poetry. Sandburg was a multifaceted journalist: he wrote editorials and movie criticism as well as news stories. In addition, Sandburg wrote poems and stories for children.

Sandburg’s “Rootabaga Stories,” a collection of stories for children.

Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois, the son of impoverished, illiterate Swedish immigrants. He left school at age thirteen and worked odd jobs and wandered the country as a hobo before enlisting in the Sixth Illinois Volunteers and serving in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. Sandburg’s life during these early years bears some resemblance to Sherwood Anderson, who was only about a year and half older than Sandburg. Both men grew up impoverished in the Midwest, had rudimentary early education, worked odd jobs as laborers and served in the Spanish-American War. Each man later became a part of the Chicago literary renaissance of the 1910s.

Sandburg at center in the second row during the Spanish-American War.

Sandburg later attended Lombard College in Illinois, where he published some apprentice works of poetry, before moving to Milwaukee to work for the Social Democratic Party and write for several newspapers. He also served as secretary to Milwaukee’s Socialist Mayor, Emil Seidel, from 1910-1912. Sandburg left for Chicago in 1912, which was the same year Harriet Monroe established the magazine Poetry, which would be an important outlet for some of Sandburg’s earliest and best work. In 1908, he married Lilian “Paula” Steichen, the sister of the famous photographer Edward Steichen. They had three daughters: Margaret, Janet, and Helga. 

Mayor Emil Seidel of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Harriet Monroe

Sandburg began writing for newspapers in Chicago while continuing to write his poetry, winning Poetry’s Levinson Prize in 1914 for work that formed the basis for his first volume of mature poetry: Chicago Poems, which appeared in 1916. Cornhuskers appeared in 1918, Smoke and Steel in 1920, and Slabs of the Sunburnt West in 1922. Sandburg snagged the Pulitzer Prize three times: twice for poetry with Cornhuskers in 1919 and for his Collected Poems in 1951, and once for history in 1940 with Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Sandburg’s 1919 prize was a “special citation” award by the Pulitzer committee in conjunction with the Poetry Society before the formal establishment of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1920. The Pulitzer committee still occasionally issues special citation awards to writers, musicians, or publications they feel deserve recognition.

Increasing financial success from his writing prompted Sandburg to leave newspaper work in 1932. Sandburg had published the first volumes of his Lincoln biography in the late 1920s and continued the story of Lincoln during the Civil War in four more volumes that appeared throughout the Great Depression. Sandburg’s Lincoln biography has drawn criticism through the years for inaccuracy and romanticism while also earning wide acclaim as powerful and vibrant history that captures the mystery and power of Lincoln.

Abe Lincoln

After years of living in the Midwest in Illinois and Michigan, he moved with his family in 1945 to a farm called Connemara in Flat Rock, North Carolina that is now the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. Carl Sandburg died on July 22, 1967 after a series of heart attacks and is buried in Galesburg, Illinois.

Lilian “Paula” Steichen Sandburg (Image: National Park Service).

Carl and Paula with their daughters Margaret, Janet, and Helga (Image: National Park Service).

“Star Silver” appears in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and Expanded Edition, which appeared in 1970. It was also featured in a volume called The Sandburg Range, an anthology released in 1957 showcasing Sandburg’s work in a variety of genres. I don’t have any information at this time as to whether or not the poem appeared prior to this in a periodical or an earlier volume of poetry. One noteworthy aspect of this poem was its use as the inside verse on a Hallmark Christmas card. A box of these cards was featured on a 2012 Facebook post by the Sandburg Home site in North Carolina. No date was given for when the cards were released, but the design on the box looks like early to mid 1960s vintage. If I am able to track down any further information about the poem’s original appearance and the year of the Hallmark printing, I will update this page with that information.

Sandburg was a prolific writer, especially with poetry. His final Complete Poems from 1970 is a doorstopper of a book. It is fair to say that in terms of his poetry he wrote too much, and his work suffers at times from looseness and shallowness. On the other hand, Sandburg’s poems can be powerful and compelling. Some of his best work can be found in his shorter, more imagistic poems.

I have a great appreciation and respect for Sandburg and his work. I certainly appreciate challenging poetry—poetry that is more complex in structure and meter, or work that explores powerful philosophical or moral issues in depth—but I like his accessibility. The reader can pick up a volume of Sandburg’s poetry and understand immediately what he is getting at. This is certainly the case with “Star Silver.” 

“Adoration of the Magi” by Giotto di Bondone.

I see some quintessential Sandburgian elements in this poem. There’s a love of color—the silver against the pine green. There’s a poet’s questioning voice, which shows up often in his poetry. “Sheep raisers” and “wooly four-footed ramblers” have a homespun quality, a voice emerging out of a folk tradition. I see echoes of his Midwestern rural roots in the baby Jesus being “slung in a feed box”—that’s an image linking the humble origins of Jesus to the plain people of the American countryside, although the urban world Sandburg knew so well and often references in his poems is here too—Jesus is born “in a Bethlehem slum,” making his identification with the poor and beaten down of the world apparent.

Sassetta’s “The Journey of the Magi,” c. 1432-1436.

Then there are lines speaking to the senses, rendering the spiritual made manifest in a natural world—the baby’s cry; the sound of the mule eating; the softness of the baby’s skin, with that wonderful image of “snowflakes of Norway”—an interesting line as well given the Scandinavian origins of Sandburg and some Midwesterners. Finally, we are reminded of the “vagabond” nature of the Holy Family and the shepherds and Wise Men. They are wanderers in this world, as we all are. At last we return to the world of the child, for if there is one holiday so closely focused on children and one child in particular, it is Christmas. Sandburg’s short Christmas poem offers readers, whether believers or not, an opportunity to ponder an intriguing question: why does the story never wear out?

Star Silver

The silver of one star
Plays cross-lights against pine green.

And the play of this silver
crosswise against the green
is an old story…..
thousands of years.

And sheep raisers on the hills by night
Watching the wooly four-footed ramblers,
Watching a single silver star—
Why does the story never wear out?

“Adoration of the Shepherds,” by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622.

And a baby slung in a feed-box
Back in a barn in a Bethlehem slum,
A baby’s first cry mixing with the crunch
Of a mule’s teeth on Bethlehem Christmas corn,
Baby fists softer than snowflakes of Norway,

The vagabond Mother of Christ
And the vagabond men of wisdom,
All in a barn on a winter night,
And a baby there in swaddling clothes on hay—
Why does the story never wear out?

The sheen of it all
Is a star silver and a pine green
For the heart of a child asking a story,
The red and hungry, red and hankering heart
Calling for cross-lights of silver and green.

                                        –Carl Sandburg

Patrick Kerin

Resources:

The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Revised and Expanded Edition. Introduction by Archibald MacLeish. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, New York, London, 1970.

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature–Volume One: The Authors. Philip A. Greasley, General Editor. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2001.