Woody Guthrie by Gustavus Stadler

Author:Gustavus Stadler [Stadler, Gustavus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press

Edward P. Comentale writes that this song “may be the most avant-garde moment of the collection, if not Guthrie’s entire career.”28 With glorious economy, the song does precisely what it says it wants to do: sings the names. There’s a sensual quality to the singer voicing his desire, essentially, to feel his mouth forming their names. He lingers, tenderly, over the names of Nicola, Rosie, and Bart, eschewing, for the most part, details of the events. Indeed, he makes this preference clear: although “I just heard your story,” nonetheless “I just want to sing your name”; “You made speeches for the workers,” but rather than relaying what you said, “I just want to sing your name.” Redemption, the song hopes, will come more from the act of singing itself than from the information the song conveys. The act of singing produces intimacy; singing these historical actors’ names reanimates them through the warmth of feeling in Guthrie’s lungs, vocal cords, and mouth. Plymouth may lack statues or plaques commemorating the martyred men, but history is nevertheless recorded through this affection more than through reportage or narrative description.

The phrase “consciousness of guilt,” which so jolted Guthrie from the drama of the Bridgewater streetcar arrest, doesn’t appear in any of the songs. But his interest in the self-blaming mind-set, and the relationship between personal and political vulnerability, hadn’t abated by the time he went into the studio. These concerns run through the remarkable and odd song “We Welcome to Heaven,” another example of the turn away from narrative storytelling—indeed, from any content explicitly associated with the facts of the case. The title of the song promises something elegiac yet triumphant, the men released from their torment on earth (after impoverished lives before their convictions, they spent seven years in prison, six on death row) into the immortal status of angels for the Left. But the lyrics, from the opening lines, plunge listeners into the sentiment Guthrie described when writing about “consciousness of guilt.” Rather than celebrating the men’s ascension, reassuring them and us of their achievements despite their execution, he becomes preoccupied with describing the woeful, all-pervasive feelings of shame and self-denigration in the world they have just escaped.

We welcome to heaven Sacco and Vanzetti

Two men that have won the highest of seats

Come, let me show you the world that you come through

It’s a funny old world, as I’m sure you’ll admit

If you wear rags on earth you’re a hobo

If you wear satin, they call you a thief

If you save money, they call you a miser

If you spend money, you are on relief

If you work hard, they say you are lowly

If you’re a loafer, of course, you’re no good

If you stay sober you’re known as a sissy

And if you drink liquor it goes to your head

If you are fat, they will call you a glutton

If you stay skinny, they call you a runt

If you laugh, they’ll call you an idiot

And if you cry, they will ask you to stop.29

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