I didn’t know that Judge Sara Ellis recited Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” poem at the court last week! That is so… beautiful!

Copying the article from the WBEZ website:

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Carl Sandburg’s ‘Chicago’ poem finds fresh relevance in a city occupied by ICE

Known for praising the city with “big shoulders,” the beloved 1914 composition recently was recited in a ruling addressing federal immigration agents’ use of force. Literary scholars say they were “astounded” and “amazed.”

A judge’s decision to read a 111-year-old poem in court before curbing federal agents’ use of force in Chicago has brought fresh relevance to an iconic piece of local literature.

In a ruling addressing actions by federal immigration agents, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis last week recited Carl Sandburg’s 1914 composition “Chicago,” known for praising the town’s working-class roots and coining the “City of the Big Shoulders” moniker.

Literary scholars marveled at Ellis’ decision to read the piece in its entirety.

“I was both astounded and mesmerized,” said Ivy Wilson, a Board of Visitors professor of English and American studies at Northwestern University.

Paris Review Poetry Editor Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy said he was “amazed.”

“To read a poem as part of a justification or a rationale for a judgment of this importance shows how art can express the complexities of what we’re living through in ways that maybe other forms of speech can’t,” said Reddy, also a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Chicago.

Ellis’ order placed further restrictions on the agents’ use of “riot control weapons” and certain restraint techniques against protesters and observers amid the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in Chicago.

Her inclusion of the poem struck a chord with locals, who have long regarded the work as an unofficial city anthem. The piece has been taught in classrooms, performed at poetry slams and recited by politicians, including former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. It has inspired a “Big Shoulders” comic series, and it is even painted on the facade of Damen Tavern in West Town.

But the poem is finding new resonance during the sustained U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign in Chicago.

Ellis appeared to take inspiration from the piece’s interrogation of outsiders’ perceptions of Chicago. For example, Sandburg considers descriptions of the city as “wicked” and “crooked” alongside his view of the town as a place “with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.”

“This is a vibrant place, brimming with vitality and hope, striving to move forward from its complicated history,” Ellis said, juxtaposing her vision with the Trump administration’s portrayal, which she described as a city “in a vice hold of violence, ransacked by rioters and attacked by agitators.”

Reddy said Ellis’ comments were a fitting addendum to the piece.

“The poem reflects the complex messiness and energy and contradictions of Chicago,” he said. “And I think what the judge was saying was, this is a city, like any great American city, that has problems and a dynamic population that is debating and thinking and struggling to work through those problems. And at the same time, there are things we will resist in order to remain true to our values and our diversity.”

Born in Galesburg, Sandburg went on to become an influential poet, journalist and biographer. When the Pulitzer Prize winner moved to Chicago, he observed an economy driven by industrial workers. He then venerated the “hog butcher,” “tool maker” and “player with railroads” in the opening lines of “Chicago.”

While that first stanza is widely popular, Wilson said he is more drawn to Sandburg’s line about the city “building, breaking, rebuilding.” He interprets it as the ethos of working-class Americans, including those who came to the country both willingly and through forced labor.

“That notion is really the heart of not just how Sandburg is thinking about Chicago, but really the best of what we would call an American sensibility,” Wilson said. “And that American sensibility is not nativist, but it’s really built from the backs of immigrants, all of us as immigrants.”

Donald G. Evans, executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, also described the poem as relevant to the current moment. He said Sandburg was known for his “compassion and humanity.”

“What we aspire to in the cultural community is to be like Carl Sandburg was: a person who believed in the people, and believed that everybody — from the bottom up — should have the same kind of respect and the same kind of support,” said Evans, who inducted Sandburg into the hall of fame in 2011.

“And that we should help all of our neighbors.”

The poem

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

   Bareheaded,

   Shoveling,

   Wrecking,

   Planning,

   Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.