The Poetry of R.E. Slater

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

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 …

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Legend of 1900

( Click any picture to enlarge )

[Spoiler Alert!] The Legend of 1900 - Magic Waltz Scene (HD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lBnr9RyISU

[Spoiler Alert!] Tarantella!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHpQz-_xhTk

[Spoiler Alert!] The Legend of 1900 - Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uf-LDlZMFE&feature=player_embedded#!

[Spoiler Alert] Playing Love [HQ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhx8XVMJvbQ

The Legend of 1900 Theme Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4jLY_d2Iyg

Silent Goodbye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9M4-myfudU

Ships and Snow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyw9nJ_mfHk

End Theme: Lost Boys Calling (Roger Waters)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9M4-myfudU

No. 1- 20 Additional Scores - http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pok9er+1900&aq=f

[Spoiler Alert!] Wikipedia Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_1900

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[Spoiler Alert!]
The Legend of 1900 Movie Review

http://www.mediacircus.net/legend.html

I was born on this ship and the whole world passed me by... two thousand people at a time.

"The Legend of 1900" is the latest masterpiece from acclaimed director Giuseppe Tornatore, the man behind the Oscar-winning "Cinema Paradiso", marking his return to film-making after a four year absence (his last film was 1995's "The Star Maker"). Based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco, "The Legend of 1900" is not only Tornatore's first English-language film, but it is probably his most ambitious film to date, a five-decade epic that takes place aboard the confines of a cruise ship. Unfortunately, like his breakthrough "Cinema Paradiso", North American studio executives have once again (Miramax with "Cinema Paradiso", and Fine Line with his latest) meddled with Tornatore's cut of the film, and shrunk the original 160 minute running time of the Italian version down to just a little over two hours. And though the film is still a remarkable achievement despite the re-editing, it is readily apparent that the emotional resonance of the story has taken a hit in the interest of brevity.

I found him on the first month of the first year of this friggin' new century... so I calls 'im '1900'!

The story is told through the reminiscences of a soon-to-be-retired trumpet player named Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince of "Heavy"), who was the closest and only friend to a long-forgotten piano virtuoso named Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900, or 1900 for short. It begins in the year 1900, when an engine room worker (Bill Nunn of "He Got Game") finds an abandoned baby on board the luxury liner The Virginian. He names the child after the year, and decides to adopt him as his own. Over the years, the child grows up and develops an uncanny ear for music and a remarkable talent for playing the piano. By the time 1900 reaches his twenties (played by Tim Roth of "Pulp Fiction"), he has become a permanent fixture aboard the ship, charming audiences with music 'that's never been heard before'. As word of his talent spreads, he soon attracts the attention of record producers, publicists, and even Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III of "The General's Daughter"), the father of Jazz, who wants to challenge the prodigy to a piano duel.

I've been hearing a lot of talk about a guy... he's supposed to have been born on this ship, and never been off it since.

However, despite being on the verge of fame and fortune, 1900 lives a lonely existence, having never set foot off the ship throughout his life. Each round trip of The Virginian between Italy and New York brings thousands of new faces into 1900's world, but it is only temporary, as they all eventually disembark to start life anew in America, leaving the piano player behind. Despite the calls of fame, fortune, or even the affections of a young woman (Melanie Thierry), 1900 steadfastly remains on board the ship, too frightened of the possibilities and new experiences that await him on dry land. 1900 was born on the ship, and it seems that is where he will die.

Leave this ship, marry a nice woman, and have children... all those things in life that are not immense, but are worth the effort.

Despite the historical trappings, "The Legend of 1900" is by no means a true historical account of actual events (other than Jelly Roll Morton, who was a real person). Instead, Tornatore has crafted an allegorical film that is a part-fairy tale, part-tragedy, and nonetheless inspiring. Through the character of 1900, Tornatore explores the immigrant experience, the fear of change within all of us, and how some of us find the courage to overcome such fears. Sentimental without becoming schmaltzy, this is a story told in the Tornatore tradition that explores the simple emotions of day-to-day experience. With the addition of Ennio Morricone's masterful score, this is a film that, despite its flaws (including an episodic narrative structure and spots of laggard pacing), manages to entertain the senses and warm the heart.

They say this guy makes music that's never been heard before.

Part of why this film works so well is because of its main character. Roth excels in his portrayal of 1900, a man who commands the ebony and ivory yet shies away from what he does not understand. Played with both resolve and panache, 1900 is an enigmatic and charismatic character that audiences can easily warm up to and identify with. Vince, whose character never veers too far from fulfilling the role of narrator and sounding board for 1900, fills his role admirably, though it would have been nice if we had been given more background on an otherwise throwaway character. Finally, Clarence Williams III does a memorable turn as Jazz great Jelly Roll Morton in the film's highlight sequence where the two musicians square off against one another to find out who is the best.

With "The Legend of 1900", Tornatore has prepared a sumptuous cinematic feast with an engaging story about an enigmatic character, told in a whimsical yet poignant manner. Though it may not have the emotional intensity of some of Tornatore's earlier films and suffers from having over half-an-hour left on the cutting-room floor, "The Legend of 1900" is still definitely worth a look.

Movie Quotes

There's a whole world out there with only a gangplank ahead to cross it...

A good story is worth more than an old trumpet...

We were dancing with the ocean locked on the golden parquet of night...

I was born on this ship. The world passed me by, by two thousand people at a time. And there were wishes here, but never more than could fit on a ship, between prow and stern. You played out your happiness on a piano that was not infinite. I learned to live that way.

Take piano: keys begin, keys end. You know there are 88 of them. Nobody can tell you any different. They are not infinite. You're infinite... And on those keys, the music that you can make... is infinite. I like that. That I can live by.

But you get me up on that gangway and roll out a keyboard with millions of keys (the lives of people), and that's the truth, there's no end to them, that keyboard is infinite. But if that keyboard is infinite there's no music you can play. You're sitting on the wrong bench. That's God's piano.

Land is a ship too big for me. It's a woman too beautiful. It's a voyage too long. Perfume too strong. It's music I don't know how to make. I can't get off this ship. At best, I can step off my life. After all, it's as though I never existed. You're the exception, Max. You're the only one who knows that I'm here. You're a minority. You'd better get used to it...

[explaining why he didn't leave the ship and never will be] All that city... You just couldn't see an end to it. The end! Please, could you show me where it ends? It was all very fine on that gangway and I was grand, too, in my overcoat. I cut quite a figure and I had no doubts about getting off. Guaranteed. That wasn't a problem. It wasn't what I saw that stopped me, Max. It was what I didn't see. Can you understand that? What I didn't see. In all that sprawling city, there was everything except an end. There was everything. But there wasn't an end. What I couldn't see was where all that came to an end. The end of the world.

Christ, did you see the streets? There were thousands of them! How do you choose just one? One woman, one house, one piece of land to call your own, one landscape to look at, one way to die. All that world weighing down on you without you knowing where it ends. Aren't you scared of just breaking apart just thinking about it, the enormity of living in it?

The Legend of 1900 Duel Part 1 HD

(the vid will clear up in a few seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJHVU3AVwyU

The Legend Of 1900 Duel Part 2 HD

(ditto)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Msgwcaopsc&feature=relmfu

Friday, October 21, 2011

Repost: The Myth That Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare

The Shakespeare Shakedown

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/film-anonymous-doubts-shakespeare.html

by Simon Schama
Oct 17, 2011

The new film ‘Anonymous’ says the Bard was a fraud. Don’t buy it.

Roland Emmerich’s inadvertently comic new movie, Anonymous, purports to announce to the world that the works we deluded souls imagine to have been written by one William Shakespeare were actually penned by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. James Shapiro’s fine book Contested Will chronicles the long obsession with depriving Shakespeare of authentic authorship of his works, mostly on the grounds that no manuscripts survive but also that his cultural provenance was too lowly, and his education too rudimentary, to have allowed him to penetrate the minds of kings and courtiers. Only someone from the upper crust, widely traveled and educated at the highest level, this argument runs, could have had the intellectual wherewithal to have created, say, Julius Caesar.

Alternative candidates for the "real" Shakespeare have numbered the Cambridge-schooled Christopher Marlowe (who also happens to have been killed before the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays appeared) and the philosopher--statesman Francis Bacon. But the hottest candidate for some time has been the Earl of Oxford, himself a patron of dramatists, a courtier-poet of middling talent, and an adventurer who was at various times banished from the court and captured by pirates. The Oxford theory has been doing the rounds since 1920, when an English scholar, Thomas Looney (pronounced Loaney), first brought it before the world.

None of which would matter very much were there not something repellent at the heart of the theory, and that something is the toad, snobbery—the engine that drives the Oxfordian case against the son of the Stratford glover John Shakespeare. John was indeed illiterate. But his son was not, as we know incontrovertibly from no fewer than six surviving signatures in Shakespeare’s own flowing hand, the first from 1612, when he was giving evidence in a domestic lawsuit.

The Earl of Oxford was learned and, by reports, witty. But publicity -materials for Anonymous say that Shakespeare by comparison went to a mere "village school" and so could hardly have compared with the cultural richness imbibed by Oxford. The hell he couldn’t! Stratford was no "village," and the "grammar school," which means elementary education in America, was in fact a cradle of serious classical learning in Elizabethan England. By the time he was 13 or so, Shakespeare would have read (in Latin) works by Terence, Plautus, Virgil, Erasmus, Cicero, and probably Plutarch and Livy too. One of the great stories of the age was what such schooling did for boys of humble birth.

How could Shakespeare have known all about kings and queens and courtiers? By writing for them and playing before them over and over again—nearly a hundred performances before Elizabeth and James, almost 20 times a year in the latter case. His plays were published in quarto from 1598 with his name on the page. The notion that the monarchs would have been gulled into thinking he was the true author, when in fact he wasn’t, beggars belief.

The real problem is not all this idiotic misunderstanding of history and the world of the theater but a fatal lack of imagination on the subject of the imagination. The greatness of Shakespeare is precisely that he did not conform to social type—that he was, in the words of the critic William Hazlitt, "no one and everyone." He didn’t need to go to Italy because Rome had come to him at school and came again in the travels of his roaming mind. His capacity for imaginative extension was socially limitless too: reaching into the speech of tavern tarts as well as archbishops and kings. It is precisely this quicksilver, protean quality that of course stirs the craving in our flat-footed celeb culture for some more fully fleshed-out Author. That’s what, thank heavens, the shape-shifting Shakespeare denies us. But he gives us everything and everyone else. As Hazlitt beautifully and perfectly put it, "He was just like any other man, but ... he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself, but he was all that others were, or that they could become."

Simon Schama is a professor of history and art history at Columbia University. He has been an essayist and critic for The New Yorker since 1994, his art criticism winning the National Magazine Award in 1996. Parts III and IV of his new series, The American Future: A History, air Tuesday night at 8 p.m. on BBC America.

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Thursday, October 20, 2011

Geroge Herbert - Commentary on the Christian Poem "Easter Wings"

Easter Wings

from The Temple (1633), by George Herbert

The same poem turned about on itself

forms a pair of wings

The poem is usually printed in modern anthologies as seen above. In the 1633 edition. the poem is printed as seen in the scanned copy below, making it look more like its title.

For a different placement here are copies of the Williams Manuscript

(also called MS. Jones B 62 in Dr. Williams Library)

The Bodleian MS (also called MS Tanner)

page 1 of "Easter-wings"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

http://www.ccel.org/

George Herbert, The Temple - http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/TempleFrames.html

George Herbert, The Priest to the Temple - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/herbert?show=worksBy

George Herbert - (1593-1633), Poet and divine

George Herbert was born to a noble family in Wales; his mother was patron to John Donne who dedicated his 'Holy Sonnets' to her. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1620 he was elected to the prestigious post of Public Orator.

His first two sonnets were sent to his mother in 1610. On the theme that the love of God is a worthier subject for verse than the love of woman. They foreshadowed his future religious and poetic inclinations, but at first Herbert seemed bent on a secular career, much involved in court life and Member of Parliament for Montgomery in Wales from 1624-5. His only published verse during this period was in Greek and Latin, for formal occasions.

In 1627, however, he resigned as Orator and was ordained a priest, becoming rector at Bemerton in Wiltshire where he was noted for his diligence and humility, traits reflected in his poetry which also expresses the conflict between the religious and worldly life.

When he realized he was dying of consumption, he sent a collection of his poems in manuscript to his friend Nicholas Ferrar to judge whether to burn them or publish them. The result was The Temple, religious poems using common language and rhythms of speech, published to enormous popular acclaim and running to 13 editions by 1680.

Also published after his death, in 1652, was A Priest to the Temple: Or the Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Life homely, prose advice to country clerics.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Related Criticism to Herbert's poem, "Easter Wings"
http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Easterwings.html

Joseph Addison, in The Spectator, No. 58, Monday, May 7, 1711, argued against ancient Greek poems in the shape of eggs, &c. as false wit. He continued:

Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of Wit [shaped poems] in one of the following Verses in his Mac Fleckno; which an English Reader cannot understand, who does not know that there are those little Poems abovementioned in the Shape of Wings and Altars.
       . . . Chuse for thy Command
Some peaceful Province in Acrostick Land;
There may'st thou Wings display, and Altars raise,
And torture one poor Word a thousand Ways.
This Fashion of false Wit was revived by several Poets of the last Age, and in particular may be met with among Mr. Herbert's Poems; . . . .

Professor's rebuttal (without degrading Addison's perception or gift for expression):

When devices are dropped into/on to a work, they are just ornaments scattered on pseudo-art/kitsch (in this Addison rings true). When ornaments are integrated into the meaning of the work, they loose their ornamentation and become part of the meaning, working together in the poem. Herbert converted the use of popular devices and tricks of his day into his vision of the world, giving an understanding beyond the mundane. [In a similar way that God takes clay and makes something better out of it.] (JRA)

Art Student's Addenda:

This is the difference between Baroque and Classical Art. Baroque art is famous for its ornaments, but details support the concept of the work in Classical Art.

Music Student's Coda:

The history of music classes Bach as baroque, but his "ornaments" advance and echo the message of the piece and hold the entire work together. As Albert Schweitzer shows concerning the Preludes for Organ. In this way Bach was closer to the Classic Period than most give him credit.

The following is quoted "as is" from a University of Texas at Austin page no longer on the Internet:

Interchange 7 on
George Herbert

Herbert II

Leslie Barnett remarks on "Easter Wings":

"With thee

Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victories:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight on me."

I feel that this poem is saying that you can't just "create" someone then leave them on their own to grow. They will not grow into a strong person with good qualities. A person needs nurturing, love, and support before they can take "flight" on their own. the last line says this more directly, if he puts his wing just over the other persons then their strenght will push him to be strong and begin his own flight. The reference to the Lord's creation of man is only symbolic, I feel that he is speaking indirectly about parenting and society's affect on a person.

Cecile Coneway:
I do not understand what the last line ("Affliction shall advance the flight on me") is saying. How does affliction fit into it?

Todd Erickson:
Why is the reference to the Lord's creation only symbolic??

Colleen Ignacio:
Knowing Herbert, it was probably strictly about religion.

Leslie Barnett:
i think affliction means like friction, when the one wing moves and begins flight the other will recieve the initial push to do the same.

Todd Erickson:
Cecile
Flight could have multiple meanings:
uplifting of spirit, or running away

Shannon Byrne:
I felt that he was talking about man and the creation. I thought he was saying that God created man and gave man everything, yet man "foolishly" lost what he gave and became more and more corrupt. The poet is asking for God to let him sing the Lord's praises and by so doing he will fall in the sight of others and this fall will enable him to be closer to God.

Todd Erickson:
Shannon why does he use 'fall'??? That sounds so counterproductive , when he's wanting to fly.

Alicia Lane Jones:
Correct me if I am wrong,however, if we look at the title, maybe THIS poem reflects the second coming of Christ - didn't that happen on Easter - or does easter refer to something else?

Kalisha James:
Affliction seems to mean some sort of punishment in this passage. It advancing the flight in me refers to punishment maybe leading the speaker to do right and therefore advancing his flight to heaven.

Shannon Byrne:
I thought affliction meant that if he is hurt by others because he is "flying" with God his "flight " will advance or his life will be happier.

Chad Dow:
I think that he is asking God to forgive him for all the wrong things he has done. He is simply wanting to be ackowledge by God and asking for help and strength to change and correct his life, so that he can sing wonderful praises up to God.

Jignesh Bhakta:
Alicia, you are right it is a poem of the second coming of Christ

Shannon Byrne:
Todd:
I'm not really sure except maybe he means fall from the graces of society. Maybe he's thinking that if he follows God he will be persecuted.

Leslie Barnett:
another part that seems to support this interpretation would be:

"And still with sickness and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne."

it seems to be refering to societies tedency to shy away from those that need help the most. when someone looks sickly we don't want to help and that only makes it worse. agood example would be the homeless.

Xavier Alfaro:
colleen ....i agree, it had to be about religion. he must be casting a sermon down. the wings will only protect you for so long. soon you must make choices. make the right one or else. what the else is, i do not know

Kalisha James:
Alicia, I think you're onto something. Easter is about the rising of Christ. It coould, in fact be speaking of the second rising of Christ.

Shannon Byrne:
Alicia,
I think your right.

Jignesh Bhakta:
What is the deal with the shape of the poem?

Alicia Lane Jones:
you know when you are born you don't have any memory of God - it may take a while to find him again. Maybe this is saying that at his tender age he was foolish and not looking in the right places, but now he has found God and wants to fly

Todd Erickson:
wings wings

Chad Dow:
Jignesh,
I think it is to symbolize the wings and the uplifiting flight the guy is about to go on.

Leslie Barnett:
i feel that in both "redemption" and this poem i failed to see the religious connections/interpretations but what shannon said about this poem and what we discussed in class do make sense.

Shannon Byrne:
Alicia,
wha does That I became most thinne mean?

Xavier Alfaro:
Alicia....you are getting pretty deep. I kind of agree though

Kalisha James:
Jignesh, I think the shape resembles a bird, possibly a dove. A dove is used a lot in the Bible to symbolize some sort of overcoming or redemption, the title does also have the word "wings" in it.

Cecile Coneway:
I thought the quote "And still with sickness and shame\Thou didst so punish sinne,\That I became\Most thinne" is illustrating God's way of letting people deal with their sins and suffer their consequences regardless of their physical state.

Leslie Barnett:
looking at your interpretation i think maybe he became thin because sin was punished with sickness and he was sinning by not believing or following?

Kalisha James:
Shannon, I know you asked Alicia, but i think of "thinne" meaning a moral thinness. Obviously the speaker has done some wrongs in order to be punished.

Shannon Byrne:
Cecile,
Is "Thinne" thin or thine

Colleen Ignacio:
I think in his own personal way, he's renewing his vows with God. Easter probably had something to do with it. He says: "My tender age in sorrow did beginne. . .that I became most thinne." He's remembering what part God plays in his life and wants to continue down that path.

Cecile Coneway:
Shannon: I think it's thin.

Xavier Alfaro:
i do to

Cecile Coneway:
It's kind of neat the way the poem's shape becomes the narrowest when it says "Most thinne".

Shannon Byrne:
Kalisha,
If its moral thinness what do the lines before it mean

Alicia Lane Jones:
Do you all think thinne refers to thin or thine?

Leslie Barnett:
what is thine?

Xavier Alfaro:
thin. what's thine

Jignesh Bhakta:
thine?

Leslie Barnett:
oh, maybe most his?

Kalisha James:
Alicia, Are you saying that before we are born we know God, but when we are born we forget Him?

Shannon Byrne:
thine means that this poet is God's

Cecile Coneway:
Most his?

Leslie Barnett:
thy, thine

Alicia Lane Jones:
thine means yours

Vocal arrangement of Easter Wings (White, Medium-high voice and piano, 430-411 For Sale.)

Background: song of a true lark

Optional music: Welsh folksong "Rising of the Lark"

arranged by Red Dragon