A Critical Essay Al Manifi 1

Carl Sandburg’s “The Harbor”: A Critical Estimate

The brief lyrical poem “The Harbor” registers Carl Sandburg’s

‘muscular’ tension of the mind by a brooding focus on the squalor and

afflictions of a slum area as well as by a view of a lovely lake scene. A

subtle play of tone and economy of phrase in the first and sustained

evocation of visual and rhythmic appeal of the second give a rare touch of

perfection to the poem, to its organic form. This contrastive balance of

themes, moods, modes and metaphors stands out in the entire body of

Sandburg’s poetic work. Although “The Harbor” is essentially an optimistic

poem, in the poet’s characteristic vein, it eliminates all that might make the

fine, vibrant and tight texture of its music, imagery and implications sag.

Evolved at the visual level with sense impressions and emotional

overtones, the poem fuses feeling and attitude, touching irony and inner

ecstasy in a dramatic scale of shifting intensities. The transition from the

miserable slum-bred agony to the swelling rapture of the lake view is sudden

or swift. But the artistic control with which it is handled produces no

rattling, rude jolt. A rare poignancy of poetic response marks the first

encounter with the depressing and distressing features of dire poverty,

misery and sordidness. The existential agony comes out in a sort of

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metaphysical telescoping of images in phrasal compounds. But the

emergence from the dark dungeon into the natural splendor of color and

movement on the wide horizon of the lake scene powerfully recaptures the

feeling of a blessing release. This is either a redeeming foil or a natural

climax of an acute suffocation into a return of the breath in a smooth flow.

“The Harbor” is a powerful poetic vision of the terrible imprisonment of

the human spirit in poverty, dire need and deprivation, in a symbolic setting

of hovel-like huddled poor dwellings, possessed by living phantoms. The

women are framed in the doorway view of the shapeless, lifeless of ‘ugly’

walls or houses, mute, un-stirring. They render with a sense of immediacy

the absence of men and children who are suggestively out of focus, gone

away for duty or work or otherwise. Apparently seen from outside, the

women black the interior view, of sordid misery, which the poet’s swift

glance and passing could hardly reveal. But for the two phrases ‘hunger-

deep eye’ and ‘hunger-hands’, metaphors of multiple, subtle; conflicting

connotations, the slum scene would really have been a distant general view

like a hasty glance.

In a way, the women’s mute, un-resentful, uncommunicative eyes

possess the mysterious depth of those of W. H. Hudson’s old sapphire-

gather. With no explicit reaction, the swift close-up grows enigmatic in the
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phrase ‘hunger-hands’, a kind of metaphysical phrasal compound, both

abstract and concrete, figuring out the painful, insoluble riddle of hunger as

well as persecution. The ironic suggestion of hands hungry for food and

work, denied both, evokes besides extreme destitution a specter of torment

and exploitation. This wealth of implications articulates a feeling, attitude,

irony, pathos or resentment, not developed enough to be readily perceptible.

Hence the choking quality of the swift slum exposure gives way to the lake

view with all its entrancement and elevation.

The poet’s swift passage to the city’s edge comes as a heightened

impressionism of phrase, image and rhythm, with a complex telescoping of

sound and image. The alliterative ‘blue burst of a lake’ powerfully renders

the sudden impact of the expansive lake scene in an impressionistic manner.

The heaving, breaking, lake or bay in the sunshine is sharply seized with its

curved shoreline, all ‘spray-flung’. In contrast to the stifling and agonizing

slum shot, the overwhelming impact of the ‘fluttering storm of gulls’

suggests the violent agitation of the birds’ wings resolving towards the

sweep and glide of an unfettered, joyful flight over the wide blue lake, under

the bright blue sky. The onomatopoeic phrases ‘fluttering’ and storm merge

into a vivid sound impression of the exaltation and delight of a release from

earthly squalor and miseries. Then, the impressionistic image content

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acquires density and weight in the painterly phrases ‘Masses of great grey

wings’ and ‘flying white bellies’.

This exquisite interfusion of sound and image, color and movement

grows more kinetic in the flying gulls’ ‘veering’ and ‘wheeling’ in ‘the

open’. This is an intensely lyrical but un-exuberant depiction of the

boundless freedom of the spirit in the elemental world from the lurid

launching pad of the earthly life. Rich in reticence in both the images, the

poem achieves a rare counterpoise of a living death and absolute freedom of

will and action by a beautiful interplay of metaphors. Thus the growth of

Sandburg’s vision of life in the short lyric shows his mastery of style and

form, in contrast to the expansiveness of his slack, accumulative poem. In

fact, the free verse flow of the poem does not mar its lyrical, visionary and

connotative quality. The title of the poem, “The Harbor” objectifies the

poet’s idea that the dirty, ugly, miserable earth can be a harbor or haven if it

is animated by hope and love and natural beauty, by a true sense of freedom,

transcendent over the painful enigmas of existence.