Autophonography: Common Voice and the Recording Imperative in Thirties America

Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes (1936) was pivotal in establishing Sandburg as a recorder of "the voice of the people" in the 1930s U.S. Calling to critical attention Sandburg's appropriation of recording metaphors to figure "the voice of the people" in the poem, this essay shows that such seemingly sentimental affirmation of the popular voice is in fact a reworking of twentieth-century modernism's fascination with "original" languages. Through the concept of autophonography, it explores the mediating logic by which the poem represents "the voice of the people" as original and linguistically originary.