"American Spring Song" by Sherwood Anderson

American Spring Song

By Sherwood Anderson

In the spring, when the winds blew and farmers were plowing fields,
It came into my mind to be glad because of my brutality.

Along a street I went and over a bridge.
I went through many streets in my city and over many bridges.
Men and women I struck with my fists, and my hands began to
     bleed.

Under a bridge I crawled, and stood trembling with joy
At the river’s edge.
Because it was spring and soft sunlight came through the cracks
     of the bridge,
I tried to understand myself.

Out of the mud at the river’s edge I molded myself a god –
A grotesque little god with a twisted face,
A god for myself and my men.

You see now, brother, how it was.

I was a man with clothes made by a Jewish tailor;
Cunningly wrought clothes, made for a nameless one.
I wore a white collar and someone had given me a jeweled pin
To wear at my throat.
That amused and hurt me too.

No one knew that I knelt in the mud beneath the bridge
In the city of Chicago.

You see I am whispering my secret to you.

I want you to believe in my insanity and to understand that I love
     God –
That’s what I want.

And then, you see, it was spring,
And the soft sunlight came through the cracks of the bridge.
I had been long alone in a strange place where no gods came.

Creep, men, and kiss the twisted face of my mud god.
I’ll not hit you with my bleeding fists –
I’m a twisted God myself.

It is spring and love has come to me.
Love has come to me and to my men.


American Spring Song, by Sherwood Anderson. Public Domain



Portrait of Sherwood Anderson

by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

Sherwood Anderson

(September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941)

Sherwood Anderson was a writer best known for his short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio, which he began writing in 1919. Critics trace his influence on several American authors including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck. In fact, it was through his influence that first books of both Faulkner and Hemingway were published.

A native of Ohio, Anderson forever endeared himself to the Arts community when, on Nov. 28, 1912, he "left business for literature," simply walking out of his office as president of the Anderson Manufacturing Co. in Elyria, Ohio, not only giving up a dream of becoming rich in American business, but also abandoning his responsibilities as a middle-class citizen, including a wife and three small children.

He and by-then his third wife, Elizabeth Prall, moved to New Orleans in 1924, settling briefly into the historic Pontalba Apartments adjoining Jackson Square. He quickly became part of New Orleans's vibrant literary and artistic scene, drinking with the likes of writers, William Faulkner, Lyle Saxon, Hamilton Basso, and artists William Spratling, Caroline Durieux and Ellsworth Woodward. Visitors like John Dos Passos, Carl Sandburg and Anita Loos dropped in now and then. Faulkner lived with Spratling for a time, and together they wrote and published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles in 1926. Anderson wrote of Faulkner in his short story A Meeting South.

According to writers Robert Phelps and Peter Deane in their tome, The Literary Life: A Scrapbook Almanac of the Anglo-American Literary Scene from 1900 to 1950, Sherwood Anderson was responsible for encouraging Faulkner to complete his first novel in 1925:

“En route to Europe for the first time, Willliam Faulkner stops over in New Orleans, meets Sherwood Anderson, and lingers for six months, during which he completes his first novel, Soldier’s Pay. A little later, reportedly in gratitude for not having been asked to read the manuscript, Anderson recommends it to his own publisher.”

During this period, Sherwood Anderson wrote Many Marriages (1923) and Dark Laughter (1925). F. Scott Fitzgerald praised Many Marriages, saying it was Anderson’s finest work. Dark Laughter, a novel rooted in his New Orleans experience and Anderson's only best-seller, was famously satirized by Ernest Hemingway in his novel The Torrents of Spring.

The poem “American Spring Song” was published in 1918 in a collection of his poetry, Mid-American Chants.

Sherwood Anderson died of peritonitis on a trip to Panama when a broken toothpick perforated his intestines, aged 64. He was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, "Life Not Death is the Great Adventure".

A detailed account of his life can be found here.

(Portrait of Sherwood Anderson by Carl Van Vechten (1933) Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Van Vechten Collection, reproduction number LOT 12735, no. 52.)