Reading......The Poet and The Dream Girl

It has recently come to my attention that I am woefully ignorant in matters of local and regional history. In an attempt to remedy this problem, I've been spending some time in the North Carolina section of the library during our weekly trips. Last week, the book that caught my eye was The Poet and the Dream Girl: The Love Letters of Carl Sandburg and Lillian Steichen, and I've been completely engrossed in it all week. In terms of learning more about local history, this book didn't really help all that much, but no matter. Western North Carolina does lay some claim to Carl Sandburg, because later in life, he and his family made their home in Flat Rock, a town about an hour's drive from where I live. I vaguely recall an elementary school field trip taken there, but I'm thinking now that I've read this book, an adult pilgrimage might be in order come fall.

However, Sandburg and Steichen were both really midwesterners. These letters were written during the spring and summer of 1908, while Sandburg was working for the Socialist Democratic Party in Wisconsin, as an organizer and lecturer, and Steichen was teaching in Princeton, Illinois.

I suppose an interest in politics, partiularly Socialism, and the nitty gritty details of life as an organizer and activist would be enough to warrant reading this book, because there is much of that recorded in the letters. But me, I'm more of a romantic. I just can't reisist a good, old fashioned love letter. And these are truly exquisite. Not only the beauty and depth of the language, but the intensity that smolders on the pages! It's always something of a strange feeling to read private diaries and letters that were never written to be published. You feel sort of sneaky almost, like you really have no right to be reading something so deeply personal and private. Still, those are often my favorite types of writings, I think precisely because they were written more from the heart, and capture not only big, important ideas, but day to day routine as well. It makes me sad to think that letter writing is such a dying art.

Sandburg and Steichen met only briefly at the Socialist Democratic Party Headquarters in Milwaukee in 1907, and that sparked a correspondence that would lead to their marriage the following summer. The letters actually show the transition, from Steichen's perspective most clearly, of a beginning correspondence based on her interest and admiration of his work, to a passionate, full fledged, all consuming love, after a springtime visit together at her parent's farm, where they "fell in love."

This is an incredible book, and despite the fact that Carl Sandburg is the more well known, public, historical figure, these letters reveal that Lillian Steichen was a fascinating, intelligent, well-read woman in her own right, whose influence on her husband was profound. He referred to her as a "woman genius," which she disagreed with, but reading her letters, I think he was probably right.