Carl Sandburg - Biography & Poems

Carl Sandburg, 1955

Carl Sandburg began to write seriously while attending Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. He took a variety of courses for four years that challenged him to write, to read, and to think. He was a member of The Poor Writer's Club, the captain of the men's basketball team and an editor for the Lombard Review, his college newspaper.

After nearly four years of college, he had dabbled so much in so many areas of study that he did not have enough credits in any one area to graduate with a degree. He left college in the spring semester of his senior year. The passions he had nurtured while in college, studying people and events, researching and writing, were further nurtured by his life experiences.

After eighteen years, at the age of 38, Carl Sandburg's first book by a major publishing company was published. Chicago Poems, published by Harcourt, was available worldwide in 1916. This successful book propelled Mr. Sandburg's career as a poet and an author.



A Father to his Son

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'

And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.

'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.

A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.

Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.

Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.

Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.

Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.

He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.





Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
      Shovel them under and let me work—
      I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
      Shovel them under and let me work.
      Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

      I am the grass.
      Let me work.





I Sang

I Sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rythms,
Even the moon remembers them
And is kind to me.





Who Am I?

My head knocks against the stars.

My feet are on the hilltops.

My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of

universal life.

Down in the sounding foam of primal things I

reach my hands and play with pebbles of

destiny.

I have been to hell and back many times.

I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.

I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.

I know the passionate seizure of beauty

And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs

reading "Keep Off."

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive

in the universe.

On the Breakwater

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a

girl are sitting,

She across his knee and they are looking face into face

Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in

silence to each other.

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-
going boat,
Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of
green,
And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his
knee.





From the Shore

A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,

Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.





Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.





PLOWBOY

After the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.

I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.





A Fence

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble
and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering
children looking for a place to play.
Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go
nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.





Young Sea

The sea is never still.
It pounds on the shore
Restless as a young heart,
Hunting.

The sea speaks
And only the stormy hearts
Know what it says:
It is the face
of a rough mother speaking.

The sea is young.
One storm cleans all the hoar
And loosens the age of it.
I hear it laughing, reckless.

They love the sea,
Men who ride on it
And know they will die
Under the salt of it

Let only the young come,
Says the sea.

Let them kiss my face
And hear me.
I am the last word
And I tell
Where storms and stars come from.





Follies

Shaken,
The blossoms of lilac,
And shattered,
The atoms of purple.
Green dip the leaves,
Darker the bark,
Longer the shadows.

Sheer lines of poplar
Shimmer with masses of silver
And down in a garden old with years
And broken walls of ruin and story,
Roses rise with red rain-memories.
May!
In the open world
The sun comes and finds your face,
Remembering all.

Between Two Hills

Between two hills
The old town stands.
The houses loom
And the roofs and trees
And the dusk and the dark,
The damp and the dew
Are there.

The prayers are said
And the people rest
For sleep is there
And the touch of dreams
Is over all.

Accomplished Facts

Every year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
the first arbutus bud in her garden.

In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson
remembered a friend with the gift of George
Washington’s pocket spy-glass.

Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver
watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great,
and passed along this trophy to a particular friend.

O. Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel
and handed it to a country girl starting work in a
bean bazaar, and scribbled: “Peach blossoms may or
may not stay pink in city dust.”
So it goes. Some things we buy, some not.
Tom Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe
Lincoln blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called
Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers.

So it goes. There are accomplished facts.
Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps—
Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet.
When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks.
We might listen to boys fighting for marbles.
The grasshopper will look good to us.

So it goes …

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Chronology

• 1878: Born Jan. 6 in Galesburg, Illinois, second child and eldest son of August and Clara Sandburg. Baptized Carl August, called Charles.
• 1883: Lilian Steichen, future wife, born May 1 in Hancock, Michigan.
• 1891: Leaves school after eighth grade. Works as newsboy, milk delivery boy, and, in subsequent years, as barbershop shoeshine boy and milkman.
• 1896: Sees Robert Todd Lincoln at 40^th anniversary of Lincoln-Douglas debate, Knox College, Galesburg.
• 1897: Rides boxcar to Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, and works on railroad section gang, as farmhand, as dishwasher, and at other odd jobs.
• 1898: Paints houses in Galesburg and on April 26 enlists in Illinois Volunteers. Serves as private in Puerto Rico during Spanish-American War. Returns to Galesburg, enrolls as special student at Lombard College, Galesburg.
• 1899: Appointed to West Point but fails written examination in grammar and arithmetic. Enters Lombard College. Serves in town fire department and as school janitor.
• 1900: In summer sells stereographs with Fredrick Dickinson.
• 1901: Editor-in-chief of The Lombard Review.
• 1902: Leaves college in spring before graduating; wanders country selling stereographs.
• 1904: Writes "Inklings & Idlings" articles in Galesburg Evening Mail, using pseudonym "Crimson." First poetry and a few prose pieces published as booklet, In Reckless Ecstasy, by Professor Philip Green Wright’s Asgard Press.
• 1905: Becomes assistant editor of To-Morrow magazine in Chicago, which publishes some of his poems and pieces.
• 1906: Becomes lecturer on Walt Whitman and other subjects.
• 1907: Becomes associate editor and advertising man of The Lyceumite, Chicago. Continues lecturing at Elbert Hubbard’s chautauquas. Asgard Press publishes Incidentals. Becomes organizer for Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Meets Lilian Steichen, schoolteacher and fellow Socialist.
• 1908: Publishes The Plaint of a Rose. Marries Lilian Steichen on June 15. Thereafter uses "Carl," not "Charles," as given name. Campaigns in Wisconsin with Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. Writes pamphlet You and Your Job.

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Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems - http://carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm


More Poems by Carl Sandburg - http://www.poemhunter.com/carl-sandburg/poems/


Wikipedia Bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sandburg



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Biography

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg

Carl Sandburg

1878–1967

"Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg," said a friend of the poet, "is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot." His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg "the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music."

Sandburg composed his poetry primarily in free verse. Concerning rhyme versus non-rhyme Sandburg once said airily: "If it jells into free verse, all right. If it jells into rhyme, all right." Some critics noted that the illusion of poetry in his works was based more on the arrangement of the lines than on the lines themselves. Sandburg, aware of the criticism, wrote in the preface to Complete Poems: "There is a formal poetry only in form, all dressed up and nowhere to go. The number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wanted—they all come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.... The fact is ironic. A proficient and sometimes exquisite performer in rhymed verse goes out of his way to register the point that the more rhyme there is in poetry the more danger of its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning." He dismissed modern poetry, however, as "a series of ear wigglings." In Good Morning, America, he published thirty-eight definitions of poetry, among them: "Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment." His success as a poet was limited to that of a follower of Whitman and of the Imagists. In Carl Sandburg, Karl Detzer says that in 1918 "admirers proclaimed him a latter-day Walt Whitman; objectors cried that their six-year-old daughters could write better poetry."

Admirers of his poetry, however, have included Sherwood Anderson ("among all the poets of America he is my poet"), and Amy Lowell, who called Chicago Poems "one of the most original books this age has produced." Lowell's observations were reiterated by H. L. Mencken, who called Sandburg "a true original, his own man." No one, it is agreed, can deny the unique quality of his style. In his newspaper days, an old friend recalls, the slogan was, "Print Sandburg as is." It was Sandburg, as Golden observes, who "put America on paper," writing the American idiom, speaking to the masses, who held no terror for him. As Richard Crowder notes in Carl Sandburg, the poet "Had been the first poet of modern times actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression.... Sandburg had entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a curiosity.... He was at home with it." Sandburg's own Whitmanesque comment was: "I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Did you know that all the work of the world is done through me?" He was always read by the masses, as well as by scholars. He once observed: "I'll probably die propped up in bed trying to write a poem about America."

Sandburg's account of the life of Abraham Lincoln is one of the monumental works of the century. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years alone exceeds in length the collected writings of Shakespeare by some 150,000 words. Though Sandburg did deny the story that in preparation he read everything ever published on Lincoln, he did collect and classify Lincoln material for thirty years, moving himself into a garret, storing his extra material in a barn, and for nearly fifteen years writing on a cracker-box typewriter. His intent was to separate Lincoln the man from Lincoln the myth, to avoid hero-worship, to relate with graphic detail and humanness the man both he and Whitman so admired. The historian Charles A. Beard called the finished product "a noble monument of American literature," written with "indefatigable thoroughness." Allan Nevins saw it as "homely but beautiful, learned but simple, exhaustively detailed but panoramic ... [occupying] a niche all its own, unlike any other biography or history in the language." The Pulitzer Prize committee apparently agreed. Prohibited from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, it circumvented the rules by placing the book in the category of history. As a result of this work Sandburg was the first private citizen to deliver an address before a joint session of Congress (on February 12, 1959, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth).

Perhaps Sandburg was best known to America as the singing bard—the "voice of America singing," says Golden. Sandburg was an author accepted as a personality, as was Mark Twain. Requests for his lectures began to appear as early as 1908. He was his own accompanist, and was not merely a musician of sorts; he played the guitar well enough to have been a pupil of Andres Segovia. Sandburg's songs were projected by a voice "in which you [could] hear farm hands wailing and levee Negroes moaning." It was fortunate that he was willing to travel about reciting and recording his poetry, for the interpretation his voice lent to his work was unforgettable. With its deep rich cadences, dramatic pauses, and midwestern dialect, his speech was "a kind of singing." Ben Hecht once wrote: "Whether he chatted at lunch or recited from the podium he had always the same voice. He spoke like a man slowly revealing something."

A self-styled hobo, Sandburg was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, had six high schools and five elementary schools named for him, and held news conferences with presidents at the White House. "My father couldn't sign his name," wrote Sandburg; "[he] made his 'mark' on the CB&Q payroll sheet. My mother was able to read the Scriptures in her native language, but she could not write, and I wrote of Abraham Lincoln whose own mother could not read or write! I guess that somewhere along in this you'll find a story of America."

A Sandburg archives is maintained in the Sandburg Room at the University of Illinois. Ralph G. Newman, who is known primarily as a Lincoln scholar but who also is the possessor of what is perhaps the largest and most important collection of Sandburgiana, has said that a complete bibliography of Sandburg's works, including contributions to periodicals and anthologies, forewords, introductions, and foreign editions would number more than four hundred pages. Sandburg received 200-400 letters each week. Though, to a friend who asked how he managed to look ten years younger than he appeared on his last visit, he replied: "From NOT answering my correspondence," he reportedly filed his mail under "F" (friendly and fan letters), "No reply needed," and "Hi fi" (to be read and answered).

For all this fame, he remained unassuming. What he wanted from life was "to be out of jail,... to eat regular,... to get what I write printed,... a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape,... [and] to sing every day." He wrote with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a typewriter, "but I draw the line at dictating 'em," he said. He kept his home as it was, refusing, for example, to rearrange his vast library in some orderly fashion; he knew where everything was. Furthermore, he said, "I want Emerson in every room."

On September 17, 1967, there was a National Memorial Service at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., at which Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren read from Sandburg's poetry. A Carl Sandburg Exhibition of memorabilia was held at the Hallmark Gallery, New York City, January-February, 1968, and his home is under consideration as a National Historical site.

Sandburg's prose and poetry continues to inspire publication in new formats. The volume Arithmetic, for example, presents Sandburg's famous poem of the same title in the form of a uniquely illustrated text for children. Sandburg's poem is a humorous commentary on the grade-school experience of learning arithmetic: "Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head." Reviewers praised the creative presentation of the poem, and the effectiveness of what School Library Journal reviewer JoAnn Rees called Ted Rand's "brightly colored, mixed-media anamorphic paintings." Also written for children, several of Sandburg's unpublished "Rootabaga" stories (also referred to as "American fairy tales") have been posthumously collected by Sandburg scholar George Hendrick in More Rootabagas. Sandburg had published Rootabaga Pigeons in 1923 and Potato Face in 1930, leaving many other tales in the series unpublished. Critics praised the inventiveness, whimsicality, and humor of the stories, which feature such characters and places as "The Potato Face Blind Man," "Ax Me No Questions," and "The Village of Liver and Onions." "Sandburg was writing for the children in himself . . ." comments Verlyn Klinkenborg in New York Times Book Review, "for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense."

In 2002, a collection of Sandburg's previously unknown letters, manuscripts, and photographs was auctioned for $80,000 by Tom Hall Auctions in Schneckville, Pennsylvania. The papers belonged to Sandburg's editor until her death, when they were given to her nephew. Many items were obtained by the University of Illinois, where Sandburg's papers are held.

Career

Held many odd jobs, including work as milk-delivery boy, barber shop porter, fireman, truck operator, and apprentice house painter; sold films for Underwood and Underwood; helped to organize Wisconsin Socialist Democratic Party; worked for Milwaukee Sentinel and Milwaukee Daily News; city hall reporter for Milwaukee Journal; secretary to Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel, 1910-12; worked for Milwaukee Leader and Chicago World, 1912; worked for Day Book (daily), Chicago, 1912-17; System: The Magazine of Business, Chicago, associate editor, February to early fall, 1913 (returned to Day Book); worked for Chicago Evening American for three weeks in 1917; Newspaper Enterprise Association (390 newspapers), Stockholm correspondent, 1918, ran Chicago office, 1919; Chicago Daily News, 1917-30, served as reporter (covered Chicago race riots), editorial writer, and motion picture editor, later continued as columnist until 1932; wrote weekly column syndicated by Chicago Daily Times, beginning in 1941. Presidential Medal of Freedom lecturer, University of Hawaii, 1934; Walgreen Foundation Lecturer, University of Chicago, 1940. Contributed newspaper columns to Chicago Times Syndicate and radio broadcasts such as "Cavalcade of America" and foreign broadcasts for the Office of War Information during World War II. Lectured and sang folk songs to his own guitar accompaniment.

Bibliography

• (As Charles A. Sandburg) In Reckless Ecstasy, Asgard Press, 1904.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) The Plaint of a Rose, Asgard Press, 1905.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) Incidentals, Asgard Press, 1905.
• (As Charles A. Sandburg) You and Your Job, [Chicago], ca. 1906.
• (As Charles Sandburg) Joseffy (promotional biography; commissioned by a wandering magician), Asgard Press, 1910.
• Chicago Poems, Holt, 1916, reprinted, Dover, 1994.
• Cornhuskers, Holt, 1918.
• The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1919, reprinted with new introduction, 1969.
• Smoke and Steel (also see below), Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.
• Rootabaga Stories (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1922, illustrated by Maud Fuller Petersham and Miska Petersham, Barefoot Books, 1994.
• Slabs of the Sunburnt West (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1922.
• Rootabaga Pigeons (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1923.
• Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg, edited by Rebecca West, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.
• Songs of America, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.
• (Editor) The American Songbag, Harcourt, Brace, 1927.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1927.
• Abe Lincoln Grows Up, Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Good Morning, America (also see below), Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Rootabaga Country: Selections from Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
• Steichen, the Photographer, Harcourt, Brace, 1929.
• M'Liss and Louie, J. Zeitlin (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1929.
• Early Moon, Harcourt, Brace, 1930.
• Potato Face, Harcourt, Brace, 1930.
• (With Paul M. Angle) Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow, Harcourt, Brace, 1932, reprinted, Applewood, 1995.
• The People, Yes, Harcourt, Brace, 1936.
• Smoke and Steel [and] Slabs of the Sunburnt West, Harcourt, Brace, 1938.
• A Lincoln and Whitman Miscellany, Holiday Press, 1938.
• Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (also see below), four volumes, Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Sangamon Edition, six volumes, Scribner, 1940.
• Bronze Wood, Grabhorn Press, 1941.
• Storm Over the Land, Harcourt, Brace, 1942.
• Smoke and Steel, Slabs of the Sunburnt West [and] Good Morning, America (omnibus volume), Harcourt, Brace, 1942.
• Home Front Memo, Harcourt, Brace, 1943.
• (With Frederick Hill Meserve) Photographs of Abraham Lincoln, Harcourt, Brace, 1944.
• Poems of the Midwest, two volumes, World Publishing, 1946.
• The Lincoln Reader: An Appreciation, privately printed, 1947.
• Remembrance Rock (novel), Harcourt, Brace, 1948.
• Lincoln Collector: The Story of Oliver R. Barrett's Great Private Collection, Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
• (Editor) Carl Sandburg's New American Songbag, Broadcast Music, Inc., 1950. Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace, 1950, revised and enlarged edition published as The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, 1970.
• Always the Young Strangers (autobiography), Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
• A Lincoln Preface, Harcourt, Brace, 1953.
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, Harcourt, 1954, reprinted, 1974.
• Prairie-Town Boy, Harcourt, Brace, 1955.
• The Sandburg Range, Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
• Chicago Dynamic, Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
• The Fiery Trial, Dell, 1959.
• Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, February 12, 1959, Harcourt, Brace, 1959 (also published as Carl Sandburg on Abraham Lincoln, [Cedar Rapids], 1959, and as Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1959, J. St. Onge, 1959).
• Abraham Lincoln, three volume condensation of earlier work, Dell, 1959.
• Harvest Poems, 1910-1960, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.
• Wind Song, Harcourt, Brace, 1960.
• Six New Poems and a Parable, privately printed, 1960.
• Address Upon the Occasion of Abraham Lincoln's One Hundredth Inaugural Anniversary, Black Cat Books, 1961.
• Honey and Salt, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
• The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was in It (chapter of Rootabaga stories), Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
• The Letters of Carl Sandburg, edited by Herbert Mitgang, Harcourt, 1968.
• A Sandburg Treasury: Prose & Poetry for Young People, Harcourt, 1970.
• Seven Poems, illustrated with seven original etchings by Gregory Masurovsky, Associated American Artists, 1970.
• Breathing Tokens, edited by daughter Margaret Sandburg, Harcourt, 1978.
• Ever the Winds of Chance, edited by daughter M. Sandburg and George Hendrick, University of Illinois Press, 1983.
• Fables, Foibles and Foobles, edited by Hendrick, University of Illinois Press, 1988.
• Arithmetic, Harcourt, 1993.
• Billy Sunday and Other Poems, Harcourt, 1993.
• More Rootabagas, Knopf, 1993.
• Carl Sandburg (children's poems), edited by Frances S. Bolin, illustrated by Steve Arcella, Sterling, 1995.
• Poetry for Young People, Sterling, 1995.
• (Author of introduction) Lincoln's Devotional, Applewood, 1996.
• Selected Poems, edited by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, Harcourt, 1996.
• Grassroots (children's poems), Browndeer, 1997.

Also author of commentary for U.S. Government film "Bomber." Author of captions for "Road to Victory" mural photograph show, 1942. Collaborator on screenplay for the film "King of Kings," 1960. The World of Carl Sandburg, a stage presentation by Norman Corwin, was published by Harcourt in 1961. Contributor to International Socialist Review, Tomorrow, Poetry, Saturday Evening Post, Masses, Little Review, New Leader, Nation, and Playboy.

Further Reading

BOOKS

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 35, 1985.
• Crane, Joan St. C., compiler, Carl Sandburg, Philip Green Wright, and the Asgard Press, 1900-1910, University of Virginia Press, 1975.
• Crowder, Richard, Carl Sandburg, Twayne, 1964.
• Detzer, Karl William, Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, 1941.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 17:Twentieth-Century American Historians, 1983, Volume 54: American Poets, 1880-1945, 1987.
• Durnell, Hazel, America of Carl Sandburg, University Press of Washington, 1965.
• Golden, Harry, Carl Sandburg, World Publishing, 1961.
• Haas, Joseph, and Gene Lovietz, Carl Sandburg: A Pictorial Biography, Putnam, 1967.
• Picture Book of American Authors, Sterling, 1962.
• Sandburg, Carl, Complete Poems, Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
• Sandburg, Good Morning, America, Harcourt, Brace, 1928.
• Sandburg, The Letters of Carl Sandburg, edited by Herbert Mitgang, Harcourt, 1968.
• Steichen, Edward, editor, Sandburg: Photographers View Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, 1966.
• Tribute to Carl Sandburg at Seventy-Five, special edition of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1953.
• Yannella, Philip, The Other Carl Sandburg, University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
• Zehnpfennig, Gladys, Carl Sandburg, Poet and Patriot, Denison, 1963.

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, March 1, 1993, p. 1225.
• Books, August, 1967.
• Chicago Tribune Book World, October 23, 1983.
• Commentary, May, 1992, p. 47.
• Detroit Free Press, November 30, 1965.
• Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 1993; June 1, 1995, p. 777.
• Life, December 1, 1961, February 23, 1953.
• Look, July 10, 1956.
• New Republic, September 4, 1995, p. 30.
• Newsweek, January 12, 1953.
• New York, December 12, 1998, p. 91.
• New York Herald Tribune Book Review, October 8, 1950.
• New York Public Library Bulletin, March, 1962.
• New York Times, January 10, 1968, September 25, 1968.
• New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1952, January 4, 1953, January 2, 1966, September 29, 1968, January 1, 1984, November 14, 1993, p. 32.
• Progressive, July, 1994, p. 40.
• Publishers Weekly, January 28, 1963; April 5, 1993, p. 78.
• Redbook, February, 1966.
• Saturday Evening Post, June 6, 1964.
• School Library Journal, May, 1993, p. 120; December, 1993, p. 116; June, 1995, p. 116.

OBITUARIES: PERIODICALS

• New York Times, July 23, 1967.
• Time, July 28, 1967, July 31, 1967.

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Biography of Carl Sandburg http://www.poemhunter.com/carl-sandburg/biography/ Author-poet Carl Sandburg was born in the three-room cottage at 313 East Third Street in Galesburg on January 6, 1878. The modest house, which is maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, reflects the typical living conditions of a late nineteenth century working-class family. Many of the furnishings once belonged to the Sandburg family. Behind the home stands a small wooded park. There, beneath Remembrance Rock, lie the ashes of Carl Sandburg, who died in 1967. Early Years Carl August Sandburg was born the son of Swedish immigrants August and Clara Anderson Sandburg. The elder Sandburg, a blacksmith's helper for the nearby Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, purchased the cottage in 1873. Carl, called "Charlie" by the family, was born the second of seven children in 1878. A year later the Sandburgs sold the small cottage in favor of a larger house in Galesburg. Carl Sandburg worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school following his graduation from eighth grade in 1891 and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat in Kansas, and shined shoes in Galesburg's Union Hotel before traveling as a hobo in 1897. His experiences working and traveling greatly influenced his writing and political views. As a hobo he learned a number of folk songs, which he later performed at speaking engagements. He saw first-hand the sharp contrast between rich and poor, a dichotomy that instilled in him a distrust of capitalism. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898 Sandburg volunteered for service, and at the age of twenty was ordered to Puerto Rico, where he spent days battling only heat and mosquitoes. Upon his return to his hometown later that year, he entered Lombard College, supporting himself as a call fireman. Sandburg's college years shaped his literary talents and political views. While at Lombard, Sandburg joined the Poor Writers' Club, an informal literary organization whose members met to read and criticize poetry. Poor Writers' founder, Lombard professor Phillip Green Wright, a talented scholar and political liberal, encouraged the talented young Sandburg. Writer, Political Organizer, Reporter Sandburg honed his writing skills and adopted the socialist views of his mentor before leaving school in his senior year. Sandburg sold stereoscope views and wrote poetry for two years before his first book of verse, In Reckless Ecstasy, was printed on Wright's basement press in 1904. Wright printed two more volumes for Sandburg, Incidentals (1907) and The Plaint of a Rose (1908). As the first decade of the century wore on, Sandburg grew increasingly concerned with the plight of the American worker. In 1907 he worked as an organizer for the Wisconsin Social Democratic party, writing and distributing political pamphlets and literature. At party headquarters in Milwaukee, Sandburg met Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908. The responsibilities of marriage and family prompted a career change. Sandburg returned to Illinois and took up journalism. For several years he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, covering mostly labor issues and later writing his own feature. Internationally Recognized Author Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. Two years later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year-old author found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him international acclaim. Sandburg published another volume of poems, Cornhuskers, in 1918, and wrote a searching analysis of the 1919 Chicago race riots. More poetry followed, along with Rootabaga Stories (1922), a book of fanciful children's tales. That book prompted Sandburg's publisher, Alfred Harcourt, to suggest a biography of Abraham Lincoln for children. Sandburg researched and wrote for three years, producing not a children's book, but a two-volume biography for adults. His Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, published in 1926, was Sandburg's first financial success. He moved to a new home on the Michigan dunes and devoted the next several years to completing four additional volumes, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Sandburg continued his prolific writing, publishing more poems, a novel, Remembrance Rock, a second volume of folk songs, and an autobiography, Always the Young Strangers. In 1945 the Sandburgs moved with their herd of prize-winning goats and thousands of books to Flat Rock, North Carolina. Sandburg's Complete Poems won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951. Sandburg died at his North Carolina home July 22, 1967. His ashes were returned, as he had requested, to his Galesburg birthplace. In the small Carl Sandburg Park behind the house, his ashes were placed beneath Remembrance Rock, a red granite boulder. Ten years later the ashes of his wife were placed there.