Should a Man Understand His Anger, or Just Have It?

Anger Can Be Beautiful

I once thought all anger was bad, and a person should avoid having it. But I learned we need to have a beautiful, big anger at injustice—a crucial matter at this time in history. That anger always strengthens the person having it. And Mr. Siegel showed that when anger is just, it's not sloppy. He said:

Wherever an anger seems to have no shape to it...seems to be like angry marshmallow, or spaghetti on the loose, we can be pretty sure that...its basis is a false one. A beautiful emotion has form to it...a sense of limitation and boundlessness.

That form you feel in a simple but searing poem by Carl Sandburg, titled "Buttons." It was published in 1915 in the midst of the First World War. In its indictment of that war, and somewhat the press, it has a horrible and meaningful relevance today. This is the poem.

                                     Buttons

I have been watching the war map slammed up for
    advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—
    are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
    inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
   a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
    death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
    inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
    office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
    to us?

Men today need to understand their anger so the terrible scene told of here by Sandburg doesn't go on and on, and the world can be safe. Aesthetic Realism enables men to be proud of the way we have and express anger, and to have rich, proud lives. It's done that for me, and I am grateful with all my heart.

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