February 26th is Grand Canyon National Park's 100th birthday. Finding the right words to adequately describe the beauty and magnitude of the Canyon can be difficult…but many have tried, including poet Carl Sandburg. In this week’s Poetry Friday segment, KNAU listener Seth Muller shares an excerpt from Sandburg’s work ‘Many Hats’, to honor the crown jewel of the national park system on its centennial birthday.
Seth Muller:
I always like the Grand Canyon as sanctuary, and I always think of it that way. Because I’ve had a lot of experiences going into the Canyon and finding all the canyons within the Canyon: places like Dripping Springs where you go in there and you’re in a grotto, and it’s dripping, and you kind of capture that space. And so it’s kind of a reminder of our smallness against the largeness, but also the fact that this incredible, epic landscape also has these incredible secret places that we can discover. And I always like this idea that I’m never gonna live long enough to see all of it. Like, it’s always gonna be this endless search for it in some way, and that there’s always a puzzle to be figured out about this place.
I feel like there’s been just incredible poetry written about the Grand Canyon, and maybe not a lot of people know about some of the poems that are out there that have been written about it.
I would like to read an excerpt from ‘Many Hats’, by Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was a great American poet, in fact, it was Lyndon B. Johnson that said, ‘Carl Sandburg IS America’, because he was such a working man, working man’s poet. And also, everything he wrote was in celebration of the country which I think makes it a really wonderful connection between this national park heritage and the poem itself.
This would be an excerpt from ‘Many Hats’:
On the rim a quizzical gray-glinting hombre was telling himself how it looked to him – the sun and the air are endless with silver tricks – the light of the sun has crimson stratagems – the changes go on in stop-watch split seconds – the blues slide down a box of yellow and mix with reds that melt into gray and come back saffron clay and granite pink – a weaving gamble of color twists on and it is anybody’s guess what is next.
A long sand-brown shawl shortens to a glimmering turquoise scarf – as the parapets and chimneys wash over and out in the baths of the sunset and the floats of the gloaming, one man says, There goes God with an army of banners, and another man, Who is God and why? Who am I and why?
He told himself, This may be
something else than what I
see when I look – how do I
know? For each man sees him-
self in the Grand Canyon –
each one makes his own Canyon
before he comes, each one brings
and carries away his own Canyon –
who knows? And how do I know?
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
