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peace, love, happiness & understanding 4/7/22
April 7, 2022 - April 20, 2022
The Potato Face Blind Man, illustration by Michael Hague
THE OPEN ROAD
peace, love, happiness & understanding
April 7, 2022
My dad loved the poems of Carl Sandburg. Sometimes I take the heavy tome The Complete Poems of CARL SANDBURG off the shelf, in search of treasures. When I open the book, I always feel that my dad is by my side.
TENTATIVE (FIRST MODEL)
DEFINITIONS OF POETRY
1 Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.
2 Poetry is an art practised with the terribly plastic material of human language.
3 Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, ‘Listen!’ and ‘Did you see it?’ ‘Did you hear it? What was it?’
4 Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes.
5 Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, crosslights, and moon wisps.
6 Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.
7 Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.
8 Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not a number for.
9 Poetry is an echo asking a shadow dancer to be a partner.
10 Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
11 Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.
12 Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between.
13 Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen.
14 Poetry is a sky dark with wild-duck migration.
15 Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and unknowable.
16 Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines or a doorknob with thumb- prints of dust, blood, dreams.
17 Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.
18 Poetry is the cipher key to the five mystic wishes packed in a hollow silver bullet fed to a flying fish.
19 Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.
20 Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches.
21 Poetry is a sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog.
22 Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it.
23 Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.
24 Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it.
25 Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
26 Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.
27 Poetry is a statement of a series of equations, with numbers and symbols changing like the changes of mirrors, pools, skies, the only never- changing sign being the sign of infinity.
28 Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
29 Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, ‘Oh!’ and another, ‘How?’
30 Poetry is a kinetic arrangement of static syllables.
31 Poetry is the arithmetic of the easiest way and the primrose path, matched up with foam-flanked horses, bloody knuckles, and bones, on the hard ways to the stars.
32 Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts.
33 Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions.
34 Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
35 Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly- wings and the scraps of torn love-letters.
36 Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
37 Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.
38 Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.
—Carl Sandburg, from Good Morning, America (The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, pp. 317-319)
Carl Sandburg wrote Rootabaga Stories for his daughters. Here are a couple of them—(reading aloud recommended):
The Potato Face Blind Man
Who Lost the Diamond Rabbit on
His Gold Accordion
There was a Potato Face Blind Man used to play an accordion on the Main Street corner nearest the postoffice in the Village of Liver-and-Onions.
Any Ice Today came along and said, “It looks like it used to be an 18 carat gold accordion with rich pawnshop diamonds in it; it looks like it used to be a grand accordion once and not so grand now.”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes, it was gold all over on the outside,” said the Potato Face Blind Man, “and there was a diamond rabbit next to the handles on each side, two diamond rabbits.”
“How do you mean diamond rabbits?” Any Ice Today asked.
“Ears, legs, head, feet, ribs, tail, all fixed out in diamonds to make a nice rabbit with his diamond chin on his diamond toenails. When I play good pieces so people cry hearing my accordion music, then I put my fingers over and feel of the rabbit’s diamond chin on his diamond toenails, ‘Attaboy, li’l bunny, attaboy, li’l bunny.’”
“Yes I hear you talking but it is like dream talking. I wonder why your accordion looks like somebody stole it and took it to a pawnshop and took it out and somebody stole it again and took it to a pawnshop and took it out and somebody stole it again. And they kept on stealing it and taking it out of the pawnshop and stealing it again till the gold wore off so it looks like a used-to-be-yesterday.”
“Oh, yes, o-h, y-e-s, you are right. It is not like the accordion it used to be. It knows more knowledge than it used to know just the same as this Potato Face Blind Man knows more knowledge than he used to know.”
“Tell me about it,” said Any Ice Today.
“It is simple. If a blind man plays an accordion on the street to make people cry it makes them sad and when they are sad the gold goes away off the accordion. And if a blind man goes to sleep because his music is full of sleepy songs like the long wind in a sleepy valley, then while the blind man is sleeping the diamonds in the diamond rabbit all go away. I play a sleepy song and go to sleep and I wake up and the diamond ear of the diamond rabbit is gone. I play another sleepy song and go to sleep and wake up and the diamond tail of the diamond rabbit is gone. After a while all the diamond rabbits are gone, even the diamond chin sitting on the diamond toenails of the rabbits next to the handles of the accordion, even those are gone.”
“Is there anything I can do?” asked Any Ice Today.
“I do it myself,” said the Potato Face Blind Man. “If I am too sorry I just play the sleepy song of the long wind going up the sleepy valleys. And that carries me away where I have time and money to dream about the new wonderful accordions and postoffices where everybody that gets a letter and everybody that don’t get a letter stops and remembers the Potato Face Blind Man.”
How the Potato Face Blind Man Enjoyed
Himself on a Fine Spring Morning
On a Friday morning when the flummywisters were yodeling yisters high in the elm trees, the Potato Face Blind Man came down to his work sitting at the corner nearest the postoffice in the Village of Liver-and-Onions and playing his gold-that-used-to-be accordion for the pleasure of the ears of the people going into the postoffice to see if they got any letters for themselves or their families.
“It is a good day, a lucky day,” said the Potato Face Blind Man, “because for a beginning I have heard high in the elm trees the flummywisters yodeling their yisters in the long branches of the lingering leaves. So—so—I am going to listen to myself playing on my accordion the same yisters, the same yodels, drawing them like long glad breathings out of my glad accordion, long breathings of the branches of the lingering leaves.”
And he sat down in his chair. On the sleeve of his coat he tied a sign, “I Am Blind Too.” On the top button of his coat he hung a little thimble. On the bottom button of his coat he hung a tin copper cup. On the middle button he hung a wooden mug. By the side of him on the left side on the sidewalk he put a galvanized iron washtub, and on the right side an aluminum dishpan.
“It is a good day, a lucky day, and I am sure many people will stop and remember the Potato Face Blind Man,” he sang to himself like a little song as he began running his fingers up and down the keys of the accordion like the yisters of the lingering leaves in the elm trees.
Then came Pick Ups. Always it happened Pick Ups asked questions and wished to know. And so this is how the questions and answers ran when the Potato Face filled the ears of Pick Ups with explanations.
“What is the piece you are playing on the keys of your accordion so fast sometimes, so slow sometimes, so sad some of the moments, so glad some of the moments?”
“It is the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters and sing:
‘Fly, you little flummies,
Sing, you little wisters.’”
“And why do you have a little thimble on the top button of your coat?”
“That is for the dimes to be put in. Some people see it and say, ‘Oh, I must put in a whole thimbleful of dimes.’”
“And the tin copper cup?”
“That is for the base ball players to stand off ten feet and throw in nickels and pennies. The one who throws the most into the cup will be the most lucky.”
“And the wooden mug?”
“There is a hole in the bottom of it. The hole is as big as the bottom. The nickel goes in and comes out again. It is for the very poor people who wish to give me a nickel and yet get the nickel back.”
“The aluminum dishpan and the galvanized iron washtub—what are they doing by the side of you on both sides on the sidewalk?”
“Sometime maybe it will happen everybody who goes into the postoffice and comes out will stop and pour out all their money, because they might get afraid their money is no good any more. If such a happening ever happens then it will be nice for the people to have some place to pour their money. Such is the explanation why you see the aluminum dishpan and galvanized iron tub.”
“Explain your sign—why is it, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”
“Oh, I am sorry to explain to you, Pick Ups, why this is so which. Some of the people who pass by here going into the postoffice and coming out, they have eyes—but they see nothing with their eyes. They look where they are going and they get where they wish to get, but they forget why they came and they do not know how to come away. They are my blind brothers. It is for them I have the sign that reads, ‘I Am Blind Too.’”
“I have my ears full of explanations and I thank you,” said Pick Ups.
“Good-by,” said the Potato Face Blind Man as he began drawing long breathings like lingering leaves out of the accordion—along with the song the mama flummywisters sing when they button loose the winter underwear of the baby flummywisters.
Here are a couple of my dad’s and my favorite Carl Sandburg poems:
THE RIGHT TO GRIEF
To Certain Poets About to Die
TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch off
And get cashed.
Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.
I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it’s many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day.
Now his three year old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week’s wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out.
The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box.
They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills.
They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear.
Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, “God have mercy on us all.”
I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine—see?
To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom.
HAPPINESS
I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
—Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Since the Potato Face Blind Man plays the accordian, and the Hungarians on the banks of the Desplaines River do likewise, perhaps it would be good to include links to some rockin’ accordian music:
Those Darn Accordians play Jimi Hendrix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzP-G9cVc7k
Flaco Jimenez, Mingo Saldivar, Pete Ybarra, David Farias & David Lee Garza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1ZXm-rFLA
Clifton Chenier & the Louisiana Ramblers play “Tighten Up”: