Harvest Poems: 1910–1960

By Carl Sandburg and Mark Van Doren

The great American poet’s essential collection spanning fifty years of verse—with an introduction by Mark Van Doren.

With major contributions in the realms of journalism, biography and children’s fiction, Carl Sandburg was a luminary of twentieth-century American literature. But he was first a foremost a poet who transformed the diversity of his experience into powerfully vivid and beloved verse. His many collections won numerous accolades, including two Pulitzer Prizes.

This selection of Sandburg’s poems is culled from half a century of output and includes thirteen poems appearing in book form for the first time. As this collection so masterfully demonstrates, “[Sandburg’s poetry] is independent, honest, direct, lyric, and it endures, clamorous and muted, magical as life itself” (New York Times).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9780544784000

Carl Sandburg

CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and again in 1951 for Complete Poems. Before becoming known as a poet, he worked as a milkman, an ice harvester, a dishwasher, a salesman, a fireman, and a journalist. Among his classics are the Rootabaga Stories, which he wrote for his young daughters at the beginning of his long and distinguished literary career.

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Contents

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Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Introduction by Mark Van Doren

From Notes for a Preface

New Poems

Now They Bury Her Again

Men of Science Say Their Say

Name Us a King

Red and White

Sayings of Henry Stephens

Air Circus

Madison and 42nd

Instructions

Altgeld

Waiting for the Chariot

Was Ever a Dream a Drum?

Under the Capitol Dome

Isle of Patmos

Chicago Poems

Chicago

Lost

Happiness

Mag

Personality

Limited

Under a Hat Rim

Child of the Romans

Fog

Killers

Under the Harvest Moon

Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard

Theme in Yellow

Child

Gone

Under a Telephone Pole

Cornhuskers

From Prairie

Laughing Corn

Wilderness

Fire-Logs

Southern Pacific

Buffalo Bill

Prayers of Steel

Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight

Cool Tombs

Grass

Smoke and Steel

From Smoke and Steel

Red-Headed Restaurant Cashier

Clean Curtains

The Hangman at Home

Broken-Face Gargoyles

Death Snips Proud Men

Jazz Fantasia

Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind

Threes

A. E. F.

Sea-Wash

Wind Song

Night Stuff

Haze

For You

Slabs of the Sunburnt West

From The Windy City

Washington Monument by Night

Upstream

At the Gates of Tombs

Improved Farm Land

Primer Lesson

Good Morning, America

Nine Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry

From Good Morning, America

Baby Song of The Four Winds

Blossom Themes

Small Homes

Sunsets

Splinter

A Couple

Phizzog

They Ask: Is God, Too, Lonely?

Explanations of Love

Maybe

Foolish about Windows

People of the Eaves, I Wish You Good Morning

Snatch of Sliphorn Jazz

The People, Yes

From The People. Yes

Complete Poems

Glass House Canticle

Freedom is a Habit

The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany

When Death Came April Twelve 1945

Number Man

Boxes and Bags

Arithmetic

Little Girl, be Careful What You Say

The Sandburg Range

Brainwashing

Sleep Impression

Star Silver

Consolation Sonata

Psalm of the Bloodbank

Man the Moon Shooter

About the Author

Copyright © 1960. 1958 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1988. 1986 by Margaret Sandburg,

Helga Sandburg Crile, and Janet Sandburg

Introduction copyright © 1960 by Harcourt Brace A Company

Introduction copyright renewed 1988 by Dorothy C. Van Doren

Poems are selected from

CHICAGO POEMS

Copyright 1916 by Henry Holt and Company. Inc.

Copyright renewed 1944 by Carl Sandburg

CORNHUSKERS

Copyright 1918 by Henry Holt and Company. Inc.

Copyright renewed 1946 by Carl Sandburg

SMOKE AND STEEL

Copyright 1920 by Harcourt Brace A Company

Copyright renewed 1948 by Carl Sandburg

SLABS OF THE SUNBURNT WEST

Copyright 1922 by Harcourt Brace A Company

Copyright renewed 1950 by Carl Sandburg

GOOD MORNING, AMERICA

Copyright 1928 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1956 by Carl Sandburg

THE PEOPLE, YES

Copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace A Company

Copyright renewed 1964 by Carl Sandburg

HOME FRONT MEMO

Copyright 1943, 1942, 1941, 1940 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1971, 1970, 1969, 1968 by

Lilian Steichen Sandburg

COMPLETE POEMS

Copyright 1950 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1978 by Margaret Sandburg, Helga Sandburg Crile, and Janet Sandburg

Copyright 1947 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1975 by Liban Steichen Sandburg

THE SANDBURG RANGE

Copyright © 1957, 1956, 1955 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright 1953 by Carl Sandburg

Copyright renewed 1985, 1984, 1983, 1981 by Margaret Sandburg,

Helga Sandburg Crile, and Janet Sandburg

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

ISBN-0-15-639125-2 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-544-78400-0

v1.1015

Introduction by Mark Van Doren

Carl Sandburg, like all of the other American poets who came into prominence with him, brought something back to poetry that had been sadly missing in the early years of this century. It was humor, the indispensable ingredient of art as it is of life. Just as we cannot take a man seriously who lacks the sense of humor, so we cannot take a poet. Humor is the final sign and seal of seriousness, for it is a proof that reality is held in honor and in love. The little poets whom the renaissance of more than forty years ago swept into oblivion were first of all unreal; their poems were not about anything that matters; and so their feelings—or the ones they said they had—failed to be impressive. They had no genuine subjects.

It is often said of the renaissance in question that the chief thing about it was its discovery of new styles. But this was secondary to the discovery of new subjects, or, rather, of old ones long neglected. Edwin Arlington Robinson restored wit to its empty throne, along with ideas and ironies which narrative helped him state. Edgar Lee Masters in the Spoon River Anthology went all the way back to Greece for the view he would take of men and women in a contemporary village. Vachel Lindsay romped through hells and heavens of his own devising, but he romped. Robert Frost spoke with a living voice of people who lived no less than he; and there was a wryness in this voice, an indirection and an understatement so convincing that his readers scarcely knew what moved them. Ezra Pound rediscovered society as a subject, first in minor ways and then in a way which at least for him was major. T. S. Eliot, witty always, did not rest until he had wrung paradoxes and puzzles out of theology. Wallace Stevens tried his hand at assessing the very form and content—if content—of the modern imagination. The list could be longer, but now here is Carl Sandburg, and what shall be said of the things he discovered?

Once more there are those who would say that the style in his case is the man: the free verse, the long, looping lines that run on like prose and yet are not prose, the commitment to the vernacular, or, as he likes to put it, the lingo of a people. Once more, however, I would say that the first thing with him is his view of the world, which, to be sure, his style frees him to express but which is, above all, there to be expressed. And what is this view? The question is not easy to answer, for his critic or for him. It is, to begin with, a broad view, even a huge one, that takes in everything visible and a good many further things that are invisible because they are all but too fine for words. Then there is the question of how he looks at this big scene, and of what goes on behind his eyes as he beholds it. The answer probably is that the sense of humor in him is more than anything else the sense of the absurd, or, as he might say, the cockeyed, the loony, the goofy. The scene before him is so crowded with anomalies and discrepancies that he scarcely knows what to think or say about it. He can be

Reviews for Harvest Poems

[daedalus_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's not so much his command of form that attracts me to Sandburg's poetry (he didn't command'em very well), it's his willingness to explore ideas. He's an idea poet. And for that, I'll always read his poetry and like it.