Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems by Paul Berman (Editor)

From Barnes & Noble

Sandburg's best & most representative poems in one volume, including "Fog," "Cool Tombs," "The Harbor," "I Am the People, the Mob," "Crimson Rambler," "Jabberers," & "Chamfort."

From the Publisher

"What Sandburg knew and said was what America knew from the beginning and said from the beginning and has not yet, no matter what is believed of her, forgotten how to say," wrote Archibald MacLeish about Carl Sandburg - that most American of poets - and his connection to the American psyche. This new collection of Sandburg's poetry, which includes four previously unpublished Lincoln poems, contains selections from all of Sandburg's previous volumes and certainly supports MacLeish's confidence in the breadth of Sandburg's scope. In more than 150 poems, arranged in eleven sections - from Chicago to Poems of Protest to Lincoln to Anti-War Poems to Poet of the People - readers can see what Sandburg was made of and, in turn, what the poet thought the American people were made of. Sandburg's aim was to write "simple poems... which continue to have an appeal for simple people," and throughout his life the poet strove to maintain that important connection. The Hendricks, in a thoughtful and comprehensive introduction, discuss how Sandburg's life and beliefs colored his work and why that work resonates with Americans today.

Library Journal

Sandburg joins the Library of America's "American Poets Project" series. The volume culls works from the poet's entire career, plus biographical material and textual notes. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

BookList

Once he bestrode the American scene like a colossus, but while plenty of his work remains in print, Carl Sandburg (18781967) is no longer much--or well--spoken of these days, especially as a poet. This new selection of his verse by two scholars, George and Willene Hendrick, who tracked down dozens of uncollected or unpublished Sandburg poems, may change that situation. It is superb, not a bum poem in it, even if one or another brings one up short with outdated slang or the use of the forbidden "n"-word (for the record, few white public figures have been ardenter champions of blacks than Sandburg). The Hendricks present 166 poems in sections reflecting Sandburg's concerns: "Chicago," "Lincoln," "African-Americans," "Love Poems," "Poems of Protest," etc. Sandburg's great inspiration was Whitman; no one else carried more of the tone and panhumanism of "Leaves of Grass" into the twentieth century than Sandburg. He was less spiritual and more political than Whitman, and his literary roots in urban reporting made for an imagery grittier, grayer, more documentary than Whitman's--an imagery, though, as striking, especially visually, as any that Sandburg's imagist peers--Amy Lowell, Pound, Williams--produced. Great stuff.

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