Carl Sandburg Books

Carl Sandburg revels in the Lincolnia of his contemporaries and provides insight into the world of the Lincoln Collector of the late 1940s and 1950s. Much more than the story of Oliver Barrett (although this is very interesting), this book presents many obscure letters and speeches with their historical context and is an excellent complement to the Sandburg biography of Lincoln. If you can find it, read it!

This book, which is an abridgmment of Basler's larger 8-volume "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln," is ideal for all students of Lincoln as a quick source for finding Lincoln's most well-known speeches, letters, and other documents. While other collections of Lincoln's writings do exist, Basler's is considered the most definitive. This one-volume edition of that collection makes the most popular and important Lincoln documents accessible to a larger group of people.

I read a story from this book or its sequel almost every night to my child. The original book was lost on a trip and this purchase replaced it. The stories are wonderful and well written. I like Carl Sandburg and I am used to the cadence of his writing; which may be a little challenging at first. (but worth the effort!)

We think of socialists in one way, Carl Sandburg was probably not it. But his letters to his soon-to-be wife, Lillian Steichen, are full of his fabulous prose and whimsy. They met briefly in January, this book takes us from then until their marriage in June. Sweet and full of love, their letters also tell the story of the socialist party in the early 1900's.

This book offers a lot of opportunities for learning. On the surface, it's the story of a legendary writer, Carl Sandburg, taking a fledgling, Kenneth Dodson, under his wing. This was, apparently, a rare event for Sandburg, who was noted for his eccentric and curmudgeonly ways. His help and motivation led to Dodson's critically acclaimed novel, "Away All Boats," a book that is as much autobiographical as fictional. In the end, the relationship goes beyond student and pupil as the two men begin and maintain a nearly 20 year friendship that defies their differences. On another level, through his wartime letters, this book tells the true story of a war-weary naval officer that has seen too much, done too much and worked himself beyond human endurance. Dodson was a natural writer and his letters home were inspirational and sometimes heart-wrenching. I must admit to not being entirely unbiased in my review. I got to know Ken Dodson in his later years. He was as deep and honest as the oceans he sailed. I must also admit that this book's main attraction for me was to learn a bit more about two men I admire, but being a writer I appreciated Sandburg's commonsense writing advice. To fully appreciate this book, "Away All Boats" is almost required reading but those who cling to Carl Sandburg's every word will find many pearls of wisdom to enjoy.

Not to be missed. "Rootabaga Stories" and "Rootabaga Pigeons" are the most wonderful, magical flights of imagination that could ever be put on the printed page. Forget digital animation! Get back to a good book!

Delight in Maud and Miska Petersham's illustrations! Yes, they are dated, but take in the detail - there is so very much animation in their illustrations, the characters (check out Blixie Bimber or the Potato Face)just jump off the pages - no need for Flash!!!

I have a friend who is a poet like myself and many years ago I asked him, "Why are there no poets who write about working people?" He said there are and a week or so later I received this small volume by Carl Sandburg in the mail. That may have been twenty or more years ago and I still have this book sitting on my night stand. It begins with "Chicago" and contains maybe 100 more gems. I know a lot more about Carl Sandburg than I did way back when. He is a good poet and writes the "real" stuff. I like his work very much. He speaks frankly but retains the mystery and needless to say he makes one think. And isn't that what poetry is all about. I try to include a poem or two in any of my books. I got two or three in "A Summer with Charlie" and I intend to sneak one or two into "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother". When I revise Hobo-ing America I am going to add a couple of poems. I love poetry.

I love the Dover Trift Editions. They're a bit flimsy, but for the price, they can't be beat. Carl Sandburg's poems paint a colorful, often exiting, and always memoramble picture of city life at the turn of the century. These poems are simple, honest, and without a drop of pretention. This is a good read for anyone, not just poetry fanatics; but don't take my word for it, check it out at your local library.

Sandburg is direct and strong and clear. This collection of poems first published in 1916 has as its signature poem "Chicago''. Chicago, the toolmaker, meat butcher, stacker of wheat the great brawler of the cities is at once Sandburg's home and posture to the world. Sandburg can also write tenderly as of the famous "Fog" that comes in on 'little cats feet' and with moving power of love ( Tell me in the grave, if the lovers are the losers) and war( Shovel them high at Ypres... I am the dust I cover them all) .
He is a poet of the American experience, the American street and its people . And he is like the beloved Lincoln he would write a long biography of, a man of the people whose poetry is truly for the people.
The People Yes.

Sadly, Chicago Poems (1916), the author's first published work, is the book for which self-styled folk poet Carl Sandburg is best remembered today. The collection takes a hard and unswerving look at the grim realities of urban life for the common man, funneled through the flume of the author's committed socialist ideological perspective. Such an approach to poetry may have been somewhat novel in the America of the time, and both history and critics have been kind to Sandburg's sympathetic portraits of human suffering.

But whether he is addressing "a dago shovelman," an immigrant who has forgotten the dignified being his ancestors in Europe or who can no longer recognize "the new-mown hay smell calling on the wind," a street walker with "haggard poems and desperate eyes," or a young woman burned to death in a factory fire, Sandburg continually adopts the simplistic notion that the lower economic strata of society is always victimized but virtuous, while governmental institutions, bosses of all stripes, the professional classes, and the wealthy are uniformly cruel, oppressive, exploitive, and, at best, indifferent.

Thus, Chicago Poems reads like a 132-page polemic with a very narrow political point of view. While many of the author's observations are poignantly insightful (such as the poverty-stricken family of a dead boy in 'The Right To Grief,' who are "glad it is gone, for the rest of the family will now have more to eat and wear"), the poems, when read together, take on an oppressively unbalanced character of their own.

In 'A Fence,' for example, "the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and wandering children looking for a place to play" stand outside the gates of a newly constructed "stone house on the lake front" built by a wealthy man, who, the poet infers, can be nothing but immoral, amoral, or corrupt. In the author's Usher-esque vision, nothing will be able to pass through the gates to the property except "Death and the Rain and Tomorrow." And tomorrow, for such a corrupt individual or family, will inevitably bring nothing but waves of bad conscience and fevered isolation. 'Soiled Dove' examines the life of a woman who "was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer," but who automatically becomes one by acquiescing to such a marriage, and who soon discovers her husband also loves "six other women," as if marital infidelity was limited exclusively to the upper economic classes. In contrast, 'Happiness' is confidently represented as "a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion," an image which may seem simultaneously naïve, patronizing, and condescending to many readers.

Occasionally, Sandburg wisely acknowledges that some portion of the tragedies of man's existence are simply inherent in the natural human life cycle. "The hand of God" also comes in for blame in several poems.

Chicago Poems is most effective when Sandburg bypasses social divisionalism--as he often did in his later volumes of poetry--and simply addresses the everyman in the individual. While these poems are often infused with a lyrical and tender sentimentality slightly reminiscent of James Whitcomb Riley, they also locate and acknowledge the beautiful within the tragedies that perpetually arise from human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality. In 'Dream In The Dusk,' the author warns that "tears and loss and broken dreams may find your heart at dusk," while 'Under The Harvest Moon' identifies "Death" as "the gray mocker, [who] comes to you as a beautiful friend who remembers." 'I Sang' describes a lover who has given up his heart to "you and the moon," but "only the moon remembers, and is kind to me."

Other poems have the more pronounced folk character of Sandburg's later volumes. The speaker in 'Theme In Yellow' is the pumpkin, who celebrates the paganistic dance of children around him "on the last day of October...singing ghost songs and love to the harvest moon...I am the jack-o-lantern with terrible teeth and the children know I am fooling."

The most recent edition of The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (2003), which contains Chicago Poems in its entirety, is 832 pages long, and provides its readership with the full range of Sandburg's original and often gloriously rich and sensual vision of life. It also contains works like 'At The Gates of Tombs,' from Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), in which Sandburg, "the crazy wild dreamer," more fully and maturely developed his political vision. Comparatively, the reductive, often despairing Chicago Poems reads like the immaturely polarized work that it is.

A few weeks after September 11 2001, I came across the poem "Skyscraper" by Sandburg by chance in a huge volume of American poetry. In the millions of lines written about that horrible day, I found his words from 70 years ago to be the most moving. Here are some lines from that poem:

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BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories...

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors....

Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the wind whistles a wild song without words
And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor.
Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick-layer who went to state's prison for shooting another man while drunk...

Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all ends of the earth.
Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building.

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I have never studied Sandburg, but it seems to me he shares that same love of humanity and fairness that Walt Whitman was so famous for, along with the ability to craft lines as amazing as "hold the building to a turning planet". His love of his modern city seems like a remnant from another age, but his absolute belief in class equality is as relevant as any 2001 street protest.

Wonderful and authentic, a great collection for any Sandburg devotee or any patriotic Chicagoan. I was a little disappointed with the actual quality of the book, binding and covers, but it is not an expensive edition and the collection is priceless. A must read!

A Sandburg classic - for children. Best read out loud. A collection of very short stories. A quick read. Fun. Non-sensical fantasy. Though a bit dated, it is amazing how relevant most of these stories still feel.

If you have kids, if you are one yourself or if you have ever been one, you want this book. This is Sandburg at his wacky-best. It will have you all laughing.

As a child, I found Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories quite odd and rather difficult to read to myself beyond the first few stories. Yet as an adult, I think they are the best read-aloud bedtime stories around. The characters and plots are off-kilter enough to be engaging, yet the pace of the stories is calm and gently repetitive.

My wife and I love and highly recommend Carl Sandburg's other book "The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle". This is a picture book that is very funny, and was one of her favorite books growing up as a kid.

Rootabaga stories doesn't have any pictures, and is a bit strange. Don't get me wrong, the author is brilliant and the writing is interesting, but it wasn't a fun kid's book like we were expecting.

Carl Sandburg's *Rootabaga Stories* (once collected in a rather hefty volume, now available serially as they were originally released) are well-enough known that many may find it puzzling that these stories -- which seemed so wonderful to them as children -- are not more widely read and spoken of. I certainly do: but I wonder if the salient quality of the *Rootabagas*, the "vividness" emphasized by Maud and Miska Petersham's clean-line expressionist illustrations, make them something of the juvenile counterpart to Sandburg's multi-volume biography of Lincoln (a memento of an American past not fondly remembered by many). In other words, we might perhaps conjecture (quietly if necessary) that these stories were intended to 'equilibrate' children in an industrialized present, something like Walter Benjamin's cinema, and that the flavor of the monumental (which intimated to the post-war reader that they were in the presence of greatness) may not be to the taste of those not prepared to shoulder the burden of social control. But for those of us with sympathy for Robert Capa and suchlike, it is pleasing that we have a new "friend" in Libros Viajeros, who are making this book available as the imposing lump it ought to be; and perhaps it is still the case, even in this era of shorter school hours and an unfriendlier public sphere, that every child ought to have a hardback book. If so, this would not be the worst one.

After searching for the quintessential Lincoln biography to read, as my introduction to studying this fascinating man, I settled on Sandberg. He was a great pleasure to spend several weeks with! Even though we know this book was completed in the 1930's it is so well written and held up by so many academics and scholars as quintessential. It is true masterpie. Many more, hundreds in fact, books have been published as biography since Sandberg but his alone provides the understanding and genesis of how Lincoln came to be Lincoln.
America (2008) is searching for the next Lincoln: revered on the right and the left, revered in the center, revered on the political fringes, we need a leader, statesman, collaborator, bold leader today more then ever.

Sandburg took criticism for filling in some blanks with his imagination, but so what? His biography of Lincoln was not intended as a scholarly treatise. Think of the mystic atmosphere of a campfire at night, with an elder telling about the greatest person in a tribe's history. That is Sandburg's accomplishment, making Lincoln live again among us, at least while we are surrounded by Sandburg's mesmerizing account. No one interested in Lincoln or in the meaning of America should miss the experience of these volumes.

For anyone that has an interest in American History and enjoys Biographies, this book is worth reading. Carl Sandburg is an excellent writer and sprinkles anecdotes from people who knew Lincoln to really add reality to this reading.
Lincoln was a fascinating person who led the US in a critical time in its history. This book captures what he was like and reinforces why he is so revered in this country.

This is a biography of Lincoln by the esteemed poet Carl Sandburg. I was born just up the road, US Route 34 (in Kewanee), from his home town of Galesburg, Illinois. Thus, I have always had a soft spot for this version of Lincoln's life

As a poet, Sandburg's version tends to be more epic and mythical--and less critical--in its examination of Lincoln. For all of that, the book still works well. The first part, "The Prairie Years," recounts Lincoln's youth and early career before he attained the presidency. The story, of course, starts with his family settling in Kentucky, where Lincoln was born in 1809. Later, he moved with his family to Illinois. Lincoln began in New Salem and later moved to Springfield. Sandburg's depiction of his development, to becoming a practiced attorney, his political ambitions, his brief time in the militia, lays out the standard treatment of Lincoln, written extraordinarily well. Many anecdotes dot the volume. We see his doomed relationship with Ann Rutledge and his rocky courtship of Mary Todd. The discussion of his famous debates with Stephen Douglas in the Senate Campaign that brought him national visibility (and rendered him viable as a potential presidential candidate) is well told.

Then, the work goes on to explore his place in the Civil War. The volume speak poignantly of the family tragedy that he experienced (the death of a child is always difficult), the strained relationship with his wife, the challenges of orchestrating the Union's war effort.

In a sense, this is a poetic, lyric, romanticized view of Lincoln. It could scarcely be anything else, I think, given Sandburg's perspective. Nonetheless, for that, this is still a compelling work and worth a read.

Sandburg was a poet, and this is a poetic biography of Lincoln. Is that an asset or a liability? In today's climate of "facts, facts, facts," most would probably say the latter. But, in this instance, I would disagree. There are occasions when great poets hit, with their prose, closer to the mark than the historians. It's like the story of the spirit of one of the Russian aristocrats going through the history books and saying, "My secret is safe." Then he reads Tolstoy's War and Peace and shakes his ghostly fist, crying, "How did he know?" This is a great work by a great writer--and lest I give the wrong impression, there are a great many facts in this book. It's one of the most well-researched historical biographies ever written. But if you are looking for more than a biography of Lincoln, if you are looking to be transported, then this is the book for you.

Richard Salva--author of Soul Journey from Lincoln to Lindbergh [UNABRIDGED]