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Carl Sandburg

 
Who2 Biography: Carl Sandburg, Poet / Writer
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Carl Sandburg
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  • Born: 6 January 1878
  • Birthplace: Galesburg, Illinois
  • Died: 22 July 1967 (heart failure)
  • Best Known As: Author of the poem Chicago

Carl Sandburg was a great voice of the American industrial age, a "people's poet" who combined the mystical patriotism of Walt Whitman with the social activism of Woody Guthrie. Sandburg's special topic was the bustle and spirit of midwestern and urban America; his most famous poem, Chicago, begins: "Hog Butcher for the World / Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat / Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler / Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders." Sandburg's volumes of poetry include Chicago Poems (1916), Smoke and Steel (1920), Good Morning, America (1928) and The People, Yes (1936). Sandburg is nearly as well known for his colossal six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln -- The Prarie Years (two volumes, 1926) and The War Years (four volumes, 1940) -- which still is considered the definitive biography of the president. In addition to all that, Sandburg wrote for the Chicago Daily News and often travelled around the country, singing and collecting folk songs and reciting poetry. He published a collection of 280 folk tunes, The American Songbag, in 1927. His whimsical book Rootabaga Stories (1922) remains a favorite with children. Sandburg twice won the Pulitzer Prize, in 1940 for Abraham Lincoln: the War Years and in 1950 for his Complete Poems.

Sandburg volunteered for the U.S. Army and served in Puerto Rico (but did not see combat) during the Spanish-American War of 1898... Sandburg was married to Lillian Steichen, sister to the photographer Edward Steichen, from 1908 until his death in 1967... His popular poem "Fog" begins with the line, "The fog comes on little cat feet..."

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Carl Sandburg
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Carl Sandburg, 1949.
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Carl Sandburg, 1949. (credit: Courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield)
(born Jan. 6, 1878, Galesburg, Ill., U.S. — died July 22, 1967, Flat Rock, N.C.) U.S. poet, historian, novelist, and folklorist. Sandburg tried many occupations and fought in the Spanish-American War before moving to Chicago in 1913, where he worked in journalism. He won recognition in 1914 with poems, including "Chicago," perhaps his best-known, published in Poetry magazine. His Whitmanesque free verse eulogizing American workers appeared in such volumes as Smoke and Steel (1920) and The People, Yes (1936). The American Songbag (1927) and New American Songbag (1950) collect folk songs he performed. His other works include Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926), Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939, Pulitzer Prize), Remembrance Rock (1948), and four children's books, including Rootabaga Stories (1922).

For more information on Carl Sandburg, visit Britannica.com.

Biography: Carl Sandburg
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An American poet, anthologist, singer of folk songs and ballads, and biographer, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) is best known for his magnificent biography of Abraham Lincoln and his early "realistic" verse celebrations of Chicago.

The legend of Carl Sandburg as a raw, folksy poet of midwestern democracy has overshadowed his later development. From the time he wrote his moving elegy on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, "When Death Came April Twelve 1945," until his final volume of poetry, Honey and Salt (1963), he exhibited a newly achieved depth and originality that far surpassed his earlier work. His youthful career as an impassioned revolutionary socialist has largely been forgotten, and he died one of America's best-known and best-loved poets.

Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Ill., on Jan. 6, 1878, of a poor Swedish immigrant family. At the age of 13 he quit school to work as a day laborer. He traveled extensively through the West, where he began developing a lifelong devotion to his country and its people. Following Army service during the Spanish-American War, he entered Lombard (now Knox) College in Galesburg. Here he wrote his first poetry.

After graduation Sandburg worked as a newspaperman in Milwaukee, Wis. In 1907 and 1908 he was district organizer for the Social Democratic party in Wisconsin and served as secretary to Milwaukee's Socialist mayor (1910-1912). Later he moved to Chicago, becoming an editorial writer for the Daily News in 1917. Meanwhile his verse began appearing in the avant-garde Poetry magazine; his first volume, Chicago Poems, was published in 1916. His reputation as vital poet of the American scene was solidified with Cornhuskers (1918), Smoke and Steel (1920), and Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922).

Early Writings

Sandburg's early poetry was as close to being "subliterary" as the work of any American poet of comparable stature. Meant to illustrate his humanitarian socialist ideology, his early verse is scarcely above the level of political oratory. "I Am the People, the Mob" from the Chicago Poemsis characteristic. The ending of the poem is reminiscent of Walt Whitman at his most prosaic: "When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool - then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: 'The People,' with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision. The mob - the crowd - the mass - will arrive then."

Neither in use of language nor in metrics does this qualify even as free verse; in style it is closer to John Dos Passos' contemporary experiments in prose than to poetry. The revolutionary naturalistic esthetic of the time called for a poetry of direct imitation; but Sandburg's "imitations" exhibited little artistry.

Sandburg's early poetry not only tended toward excessively unshaped imitation of reality but also copied other poets as well. T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" had appeared the year before Sandburg's "Fog" was published. Eliot's image of the fog as a cat has profound implications in the context of the rest of his poem; "Fog," which was hailed as a fine example of an imagist poem, has no context whatsoever and hence no meaning. In terms of imagist poetics, "Fog" might be considered successful, but Sandburg had never counted himself a member of that movement; nor had he ever seriously considered its esthetic.

Similarly, Sandburg's "Happiness" compares unfavorably with Ezra Pound's "Salutation," and his "Buffalo Bill" expresses mere nostalgia in relation to E. E. Cummings's more penetrating "Buffalo Bill's." Some of the poems in Cornhuskers are more original and fully realized than those discussed here, but none meets the standards of the best of his contemporaries.

Later Work

From 1926 to 1939 Sandburg devoted himself primarily to writing the six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, presenting Lincoln as the embodiment of the American spirit; he received a Pulitzer Prize in history for this work (1939). He also was collecting the folk songs that made up The American Songbook (1927).

Honey and Salt (1963), a remarkable achievement for a "part-time" poet in his 80s, contains much of Sandburg's best poetry. Here the mellowness and wisdom of age are evident; the sound of an American idiom echoes through these poems more effectively than in the earlier "realistic" verse. By this time Sandburg had moved from his dependence on ideology to a deeply felt sympathy and concern for actual people. Tenderness replaces sentimentality; emotional control replaces defensive "toughness." There is an explicitly religious consciousness in these last poems, only implicit in the earlier work, where it was often submerged in political ideology and naturalistic poetics.

Sandburg also published a collection of children's stories, Rootabaga Stories (1922). Other volumes of poetry are Good Morning, America (1928); The People, Yes (1936); Collected Poems (1950), which won a Pulitzer Prize; and Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 (1960). Remembrance Rock (1948), an epic panorama of American history, was his only novel. He died in Flat Rock, N.C., on July 22, 1967.

Further Reading

Sandburg's autobiography is Always the Young Strangers (1953). A biography is Harry L. Golden, Carl Sandburg (1961). Good critical commentary includes "Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems" in William Carlos Williams, Selected Essays (1954); Newton Arvin's "Carl Sandburg" in Malcolm Cowley, ed., After the Genteel Tradition: American Writers since 1910 (1959); Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry (1961); and Hyatt H. Waggoner, American Poets: From the Puritans to the Present (1968).

Fairy Tale Companion: Carl Sandburg
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Sandburg, Carl (1878–1967), American poet, biographer, and folklorist. His humorous tales for children, Rootabaga Stories (1922) and Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), were originally told to his two young daughters. Sandburg's best stories are as full of poetic invention and comic nonsense as Edward Lear, but they take place in an American Midwest where trains, skyscrapers, and a farm buried in popcorn mix with classic fairy‐tale motifs and magic objects like the Gold Buckskin Whincher, which causes Blixie Bimber to fall in love with the first man she meets with an x in his name.

Bibliography

  • Lynn, Joanne L., ‘Hyacinths and Biscuits in the Village of Liver and Onions: Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories’, Children's Literature, 8 (1979).
  • Niven, Penelope, Carl Sandburg: A Biography (1991).
  • Thistle, Mary S., ‘Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories: American Fairy Tales' (Diss., Florida Atlantic University, 1991).

— Alison Lurie

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Carl Sandburg
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Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967, American poet and biographer, b. Galesburg, Ill. The son of poor Swedish immigrants, he left school at the age of 13 and became a day laborer. He served in the Spanish-American War and, after returning to Galesburg, attended Lombard College (now Knox College). In 1902 he went to work as a newspaperman in Milwaukee. In 1908 he married Lillian Steichen, sister of the photographer Edward Steichen. From 1910 to 1912 he was secretary to the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee. Sandburg later moved to Chicago, where he continued his journalism career, becoming in 1917 an editorial writer for the Chicago Daily News. His poetry first began to attract attention in Harriet Monroe's magazine Poetry. With the appearance of his Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), Smoke and Steel (1920), and Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), his reputation was established. Among his later volumes of verse are Good Morning, America (1928), The People, Yes (1936), Complete Poems (1950; Pulitzer Prize), Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 (1960), and Honey and Salt (1963). Sandburg drew most of his inspiration from American history and was profoundly influenced by Walt Whitman. His verse is vigorous and impressionistic, written without regard for conventional meter and form, in language both simple and noble. Much of his poetry celebrates the beauty of ordinary people and things. Sandburg's most ambitious work was his six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln (1926-39); this monumental work exalts Lincoln as the symbol and embodiment of the American spirit. The last four volumes won the Pulitzer Prize. At 70, Sandburg produced his first work of fiction, the novel Remembrance Rock (1948), a panoramic epic of America. His other works include The American Songbag (1927), a collection of folk ballads and songs; children's books, such as Rootabaga Stories (1922); and the autobiographical Always the Young Strangers (1953).

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by H. Mitgang (1968); biographies by N. Callahan (1970) and H. Golden (1988); studies by R. Crowder (1963), H. B. Durnell (1965), and W. A. Sutton (1979).

Works: Works by Carl Sandburg
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(1878-1967)

1916Chicago Poems. Sandburg's first recognition had come in 1914, with the publication in Poetry of "Chicago," a poem in free verse and colloquial language. It forms the core of his first major collection, which also includes "Fog," "Grass," "Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard," "I Am the People, the Mob," and "To a Contemporary Bunk Shouter." Throughout, Sandburg echoes Whitman in his celebration of the vitality and diversity of America. Fellow poet Amy Lowell declares the collection "one of the most original books which the age has produced."
1918Caroline Playmakers. Founded at the University of North Carolina by Professor Frederick Henry Koch (1877-1944), the company became one of the leading producers of regional and folk drama, including the works of Thomas Wolfe and Paul Green.
1918Cornhuskers. Sandburg's second verse collection includes some of his most characteristic and admired poems, such as "Cool Tombs" and "Prairie." It would receive a special Pulitzer award in 1919.
1920Smoke and Steel. Sandburg celebrates the working people of industrial America in works such as the title poem, "The Sins of Kalamazoo," and "Prayers of Steel." He also defends his rough-hewed artistry in "Broken Faced Gargoyles."
1922Slabs of the Sunburnt West. Sandburg's Whitmanesque celebrations of the American landscape include the long poem "The Windy City," commemorating Chicago and showing his developing technique of juxtaposing a succession of images and exploiting the poetic possibility of colloquial language.
1922Rootabaga Stories. One of Sandburg's eleven books for children, Rootabaga Stories is a collection of fables written for his own children. It would be followed by two sequels, Rootabaga Pigeons (1923) and Potato Face (1930).
1926Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. The initial two volumes of the eventual six in Sandburg's monumental biography cover the first fifty-one years of Lincoln's life, before his presidency. They are written as a kind of prose poem, drawing both praise and censure for their impressionistic method.
1927The American Songbag. This compilation of ballads and folk songs makes an important contribution to preserving American folklore.
1928Good Morning, America. Sandburg echoes Whitman in this lyrical, free-verse evocation of American life, filled with folk elements and a vernacular style that emphasizes the common sense of ordinary Americans.
1932Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow. Sandburg provides a biographical account of the married life of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, as well as her years alone. It includes primary documents edited by Lincoln scholar Paul M. Angle (1900-1975).
1936The People, Yes. In the Whitman mode, Sandburg supplies a panoramic celebration of American working-class life in a vernacular collection of folklore, legends, and tall tales.
1939Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Completing one of the monumental works of the century, Sandburg's four-volume account of the Lincoln presidency picks up where his Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) left off. Historian Allan Nevins calls the book "unlike any other biography or history in the language." Prohibited by rules from awarding the biography prize for any work on Washington or Lincoln, the Pulitzer Prize committee gives the book the award for history.
1943Home Front Memo. Sandburg weighs in with his reflections on the war in a miscellany of speeches, broadcasts, columns, and verses.
1948Remembrance Rock. Sandburg's first work of fiction is a patriotic celebration of American history, connecting the establishment of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the American Revolution, and the Civil War.
1950Complete Poems. Sandburg is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this compilation of his verse written between 1910 and 1950, with personal descriptions of how many of his poems came to be written.
1963Honey and Salt. The poet's final collection is an uneven mix of sentimental echoes of his earlier work and powerful original verses, such as the title poem and "Foxgloves."

Quotes By: Carl Sandburg
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Quotes:

"Nothing happens unless first a dream."

"I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it."

"I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way."

"In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you wake in the morning."

"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future."

"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."

See more famous quotes by Carl Sandburg

Artist: Carl Sandburg
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Similar Artists:

Ben Hecht, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Anne Sexton, Kenneth Rexroth, Langston Hughes, Pete Seeger
  • Born: January 06, 1878, Galesburg, IL
  • Died: July 22, 1967, Flat Rock, NC
  • Active: '50s, '60s
  • Genres: Spoken Word
  • Instrument: Guitar, Arranger, Vocals
  • Representative Albums: "Flat Rock Ballads," "Great Carl Sandburg: Songs of America," "A Copland Celebration, Vol. 2"

Biography

Born to poor Swedish immigrants in Galesburg, IL, in 1878, Carl August Sandburg would grow up to become the premier poet of the Midwest and a champion of the American folksong. He left school at 13 to become a day laborer and later served in the Spanish-American War. After returning to Galesburg, he continued his education at Lombard College and by 1902 received his first newspaper position in Milwaukee. In 1908 he married Lilian Steichen, sister of photographer Edward Steichen, whom he would remain with for the rest of his life. He worked for a short time as a secretary to Socialist Mayor Emil Seidel (1910-1912) and continued his newspaper career in 1917 at the Chicago Daily News. It was his poetry, however, that brought him to national attention in the mid-teens. Both Chicago Poems in 1916 and Cornhuskers in 1918 displayed Sandburg's penchant for the rhythm and conversational mode of American speech.

Sandburg also had an intense interest in folksongs. He began learning and collecting songs at 19 as he traveled west to the Kansas wheat fields in hopes of finding work. By the 1920s, he was in the habit of writing down songs on scraps of paper as he toured the lecture circuit; he also collected songs from friends, labor organizers, and folklorists (such as John Lomax). After the success of Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years in 1926, Sandburg decided to put together a collection of nearly 300 songs to be titled The American Songbag. The collection promoted the idea that the American folksong tradition was equal to its British counterpoint. The collection also proved unique for its time for including African-American folksongs. When published in 1927, the American Songbag, along with Sandburg's public performances of songs, helped to popularize the American folk music while also de-emphasizing the importance of the child ballad tradition.

Sandburg would continue to work on multiple projects, including the last four volumes of his Lincoln biography for which he would earn a Pulitzer Prize. He published Collected Poems in 1950, for which he won another Pulitzer Prize, and his autobiography, Always the Young Strangers, in 1953. He continued to lecture in the 1960s and sang, played guitar, and read from his works on a number of television programs. Sandburg died at his family's 245 acre farm, Connemara, in Flat Rock, NC, on July 22, 1967. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., All Music Guide
Wikipedia: Carl Sandburg
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This article is about the writer. For the passenger train service, see Carl Sandburg (Amtrak).
Carl Sandburg in 1955

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."

Contents

Biography

Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois to Swedish ancestry. At the age of thirteen he left school and began driving a milk wagon. He then became a bricklayer and a farm laborer on the wheat plains of Kansas.[1] After an interval spent at Lombard College in Galesburg,[2] he became a hotel servant in Denver, then a coal-heaver in Omaha. He began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history, biographies, novels, children's literature, and film reviews. Sandburg also collected and edited books of ballads and folklore. He spent most of his life in the Midwest before moving to North Carolina.

Sandburg fought in the Spanish-American War with the 6th Illinois Infantry, and participated in the invasion of Guánica, Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898. He attended West Point for just two weeks, for failing mathematics and a grammar exam. Sandburg returned to Galesburg and entered Lombard College, but left without a degree in 1903.

He moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and joined the Social Democratic Party. Sandburg served as a secretary to Mayor Emil Seidel, mayor of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1912; Seidel was the first person to be elected mayor of a U.S. city on a socialist platform.

Sandburg met Lilian Steichen at the Social Democratic Party office in 1907, and they married the next year. Lilian's brother was the photographer Edward Steichen. Sandburg with his wife, whom he called Paula, raised three daughters.

Sandburg moved to Harbert, Michigan, and then suburban Chicago, Illinois. They lived in Evanston, Illinois before settling at 331 S. York Street in Elmhurst, Illinois from 1919 to 1930. Sandburg wrote three children's books in Elmhurst, Rootabaga Stories, in 1922, followed by Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), and Potato Face (1930). Sandburg also wrote Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, a two volume biography in 1926, The American Songbag (1927), and a book of poems Good Morning, America (1928) in Elmhurst. The family moved to Michigan in 1930. The Sandburg house at 331 S. York Street, Elmhurst was demolished and the site is now a parking lot.

He moved to a Flat Rock, North Carolina estate, Connemara, in 1945 and lived there until his death in 1967.

Sandburg supported the civil rights movement, and contributed to the NAACP.

Works

Rootabaga Stories by Sandburg

Much of Carl Sandburg's poetry, such as "Chicago", focused on Chicago, Illinois, where he spent time as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day Book. His most famous description of the city is as "Hog Butcher for the World/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler,/Stormy, Husky, Brawling, City of the Big Shoulders."

Sandburg is also remembered by generations of children for his Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies and the "Five Marrvelous Pretzels".

Sandburg earned Pulitzer Prizes for his collection The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers, and for his biography of Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years). He recorded excerpts from the biography and some of Lincoln's speeches for Caedmon Records in New York City in May 1957. He was awarded a Grammy Award in 1959 for Best Performance - Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy) for his recording of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait with the New York Philharmonic.

Memorials

Carl Sandburg rented a room in this house where he lived for three years while he wrote the poem Chicago. It's now a Chicago landmark.[3]

Sandburg's home of 22 years in Flat Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina, is preserved by the National Park Service as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.

Carl Sandburg College is located in Sandburg's birthplace of Galesburg, Illinois.

Galesburg opened Sandburg Mall in 1974, named in honor of Sandburg.

Carl Sandburg's boyhood home in Galesburg is now operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site. The site contains the cottage Sandburg was born in, a modern visitor's center, and small garden with a large stone called Remembrance Rock, under which he and his wife Lilian's ashes are buried.[4]

Carl Sandburg Village was a Chicago urban renewal project of the 1960s located in the Near North Side, Chicago. Financed by the city, it is located between Clark and LaSalle St. between Division Street and North Ave. Solomon & Cordwell, architects. In 1979, Carl Sandburg Village was converted to condominium ownership.

Elmhurst, Illinois renamed the former Elmhurst Junior High School as 'Carl Sandburg Middle School,' in his honor in 1960. Sandburg spoke at the dedication ceremony. He resided at 331 S. York Street in Elmhurst from 1919 to 1930. The house was demolished and the site is a parking lot.[5]

In 1954, Carl Sandburg High School was dedicated in Orland Park, Illinois. Mr. Sandburg was in attendance, and stretched what was supposed to be a one hour event into several hours, regaling students with songs and stories. Years later, he returned to the school with no identification and, appearing to be a hobo, was thrown out by the principal. When he later returned with I.D., the embarrassed principal canceled the rest of the school day and held an assembly to honor the visit.[citation needed]

In 1959, Carl Sandburg Junior High School was opened in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Carl Sandburg attended the dedication of the school. In 1988 the name was changed to Sandburg Middle School servicing grades 6, 7, and 8. Originally built with a capacity for 1,800 students the school now has 1,100 students enrolled. Sandburg Middle school was one of the first schools in the state of Minnesota to offer accelerated learning programs for gifted students.[6]

In December 1961, Carl Sandburg Elementary School was dedicated in San Bruno, California. Again, Sandburg came for the ceremonies and was clearly impressed with the faces of the young children, who gathered around him.[7] The school was closed in the 1980s, due to falling enrollments in the San Bruno Park School District.

Sandburg Halls is a student residence hall at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The building consists of 4 high rise towers with a total housing capacity of 2,700 students. There are several other schools named after Sandburg in Illinois, including those in Wheaton, Orland Park, Springfield, Mundelein, and Joliet.

On January 6, 1978, the 100th anniversary of his birth, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Sandburg. The spare design consists of a profile originally drawn by his friend William A. Smith (1918-1989) in 1952, along with Sandburg's own distinctive autograph.[8]

Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign possesses the Carl Sandburg collection and archives. The bulk of the collection was purchased directly from Carl Sandburg and his family, with many smaller collections having been donated by his family and purchased from outside sources.

Funded by the State of Illinois, Amtrak in October 2006 added a second train on the Chicago-Quincy (via Galesburg and Macomb) route. Called the Carl Sandburg, this new train joined the "Illinois Zephyr" on the Chicago-Quincy route.[9]

In Neshaminy School District of lower Bucks County resides the secondary institution Carl Sandburg Middle School. Located in the lobby is a finished split tree trunk with the quote engraved lengthwise horizontally:

"MAN IS BORN WITH RAINBOWS IN HIS HEART AND YOU'LL NEVER READ HIM UNLESS YOU CONSIDER RAINBOWS"

Another secondary school by the same name is located south of Alexandria, Virginia and is part of the Fairfax County Public Schools School District.

References to Sandburg

  • Carl Sandburg is referred to in Sufjan Stevens' song "Come on! Feel the Illinoise! Part I: The Columbian Exposition Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream" on his Illinois album. The song speaks of Carl appearing as a ghost and questioning, "Are you writing from the heart?"
  • Sandburg's line "Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come" from The People, Yes was a very famous slogan of the German peace movement of the 1970s/1980s. It was used in the German translation "Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg und keiner geht hin". (Commonly this quote is falsely attributed to Bertolt Brecht)
  • He also appears in a live version of the Bob Dylan song "Talkin' World War III Blues" performed at Philharmonic Hall, New York City on October 31, 1964 in the line "Now all of the people can be all right part of the time, and some of the people can be part right all the time, and even all the people can be all right part of the time, but not all the people can be all right all the time. Carl Sandburg said that." Other versions say, "I think Abraham Lincoln said that," or "I think T.S. Elliot said that."
  • Sandburg's poem "Prairie" and excerpts from several others are featured in the Emmy Award-winning PBS musical documentary The Song and The Slogan. The video features opera singer Jerry Hadley, narrator David Hartman with the music of Daniel Steven Crafts.
  • For his album, Parades and Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected by Carl Sandburg for the American Songbag, Dan Zanes selected twenty-five songs from Sandburg's song and folklore compilation, The American Songbag.
  • Sandburg's poem Grass inspired and was covered by folk-punk band Bread and Roses on their 2004 demo The Workplace Is A Battlefield.
  • In June 2007, a major work by composer Peter Louis van Dijk called "Windy City Songs", based on Sandburg's Chicago Poems was debuted by the Chicago Children's Choir and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University performing with the Lyric Theatre Orchestra.
  • Andrew WK references a misquote of Carl Sandburg ("death comes in the night on little cat's feet") taken from an exchange between Pat Buchanan and John McLaughlin on The McLaughlin Group in his song "The McLaughlin Groove". On the show Buchanan makes a point of informing him that it is, in fact, the fog that comes in on little cat feet.[1]
  • Steven Spielberg has said that the face of the alien in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was based on a composite of Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway, and Albert Einstein.[10]
  • Sometime in the 1980s Bob Gibson wrote a musical, "The Courtship of Carl Sandburg". The play was produced by the North Light Theater, Evanston, Illinois, for many weeks. Tom Amandes played Carl Sandburg, and Bob and Anne Hills sang the songs with Amandes. The play was a resounding success and a cassette of the show was produced, marked "Courtship Prod. Inc." with Bob's home address. There is no written information other than the name of the show and the performers on the dot-matrix printed labels, except the time (38:50 on side A, 32:27 on Side B) and notations that the songs were published by Robert Josiah Music, Inc., and recorded at WFMT-Radio, Chicago by Rich Warren -Engineer. There's no j-card and no play list. The material includes monologue, dialogue, patter, and songs. [2]

Bibliography

Main article: List of works published by Carl Sandburg
  • In Reckless Ecstasy (1904) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
  • Abe Lincoln Grows Up (N/A)
  • Incidentals (1904) (poetry and prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
  • Plaint of a Rose (1908) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
  • Joseffy (1910) (prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
  • You and Your Job (1910) (prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
  • Chicago Poems (1916) (poetry)
  • Cornhuskers (1918) (poetry)
  • Chicago Race Riots (1919) (prose) (with an introduction by Walter Lippmann)
  • Clarence Darrow of Chicago (1919) (prose)
  • Smoke and Steel (1920) (poetry)
  • Rootabaga Stories (1920) (children's stories)
  • Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) (poetry)
  • Rootabaga Pigeons (1923) (children's stories)
  • Selected Poems (1926) (poetry)
  • Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) (biography)
  • The American Songbag (1927) (folk songs)
  • Songs of America (1927) (folk songs) (collected by Sandburg; edited by Alfred V. Frankenstein)
  • Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928) (biography [primarily for children])
  • Good Morning, America (1928) (poetry)
  • Steichen the Photographer (1929) (history)
  • Early Moon (1930) (poetry)
  • Potato Face (1930) (children's stories)
  • Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932) (biography)
  • The People, Yes (1936) (poetry)
  • Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) (biography)
  • Storm over the Land (1942) (biography) (excerpts from Sandburg's own Abraham Lincoln: The War Years)
  • Road to Victory (1942) (exhibition catalog) (text by Sandburg; images compiled by Edward Steichen and published by the Museum of Modern Art)
  • Home Front Memo (1943) (essays)
  • Remembrance Rock (1948) (novel)
  • Lincoln Collector: the story of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection (1949) (prose)
  • The New American Songbag (1950) (folk songs)
  • Complete Poems (1950) (poetry)
  • The wedding procession of the rag doll and the broom handle and who was in it (1950) (children's story)
  • Always the Young Strangers (1953) (autobiography)
  • Selected poems of Carl Sandburg (1954) (poetry) (edited by Rebecca West)
  • The Family of Man (1955) (exhibition catalog) (introduction; images compiled by Edward Steichen)
  • Prairie-town boy (1955) (autobiography) (essentially excerpts from Always the Young Strangers)
  • Sandburg Range (1957) (prose and poetry)
  • Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 (1960) (poetry)
  • Wind Song (1960) (poetry)
  • Honey and Salt (1963) (poetry)
  • The Letters of Carl Sandburg (1968) (autobiographical/correspondence) (edited by Herbert Mitgang)
  • Breathing Tokens (poetry by Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg) (1978) (poetry)
  • Ever the Winds of Chance (1983) (autobiography) (started by Sandburg, completed by Margaret Sandburg and George Hendrick)
  • Carl Sandburg at the movies : a poet in the silent era, 1920-1927 (1985) (selections of his reviews of silent movies - collected and edited by Dale Fetherling and Doug Fetherling)
  • Billy Sunday and other poems (1993) (edited with an introduction by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick)
  • Poems for children nowhere near old enough to vote (1999) (compiled and with an introduction by George and Willene Hendrick)
  • Abraham Lincoln : the prairie years and the war years (2007) (illustrated edition with an introduction by Alan Axelrod)

See also

References

  1. ^ Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg, edited by Rebecca West, 1954
  2. ^ Carl Sandburg College. "History"
  3. ^ "Carl Sanburg House". City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development, Landmarks Division. 2006-10-04. http://webapps.cityofchicago.org/LandmarksWeb/landmarkDetail.do?lanID=11400. Retrieved 2008-10-24. 
  4. ^ Carl Sandburg Historic Site Association
  5. ^ Elmhurst Historic Archives. "Sandburg"
  6. ^ http://www.rdale.k12.mn.us/sms/pages.aspx?pagesID=413
  7. ^ San Bruno Herald
  8. ^ Scott catalogue
  9. ^ Amtrak Press Release, October 8, 2006. at Amtrak.com.
  10. ^ Taylor, Philip M. (1992). Steven Spielberg. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0-713-46693-6.  p. 134.

External links

Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Carl Sandburg
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Online selections from Sandburg's poetry


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