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Title: Chicago Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by Carl Sandburg ISBN: 0-486-28057-8 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Beyond the familiar cliches, an apt & modern collection
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Charming Collection
Comment: 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!
Rating: 4
Summary: "humming and thrumming"
Comment: In my reading of poetry I have developed a peculiar habit. In the Table Of Contents I pencil in an asterisk before the titles of poems that I especially enjoyed. I find that this helps me to quickly relocate special poems later when I want to re-read them. In my copy of Sandburg's "Chicago Poems" there are many asterisks. I think that one of the things that appeal to me about these particular series of poems is their "urbanity". As the title suggests, these are often poems about "city"... about the "cosmopolis". Sandburg had a way of animating concrete and asphalt, and making us aware of the inner life of things that millions of us urbanites walk past each day. In one of my favorites entitled "Skyscraper" he says "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." And it ends beautifully with "By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul." It is as though if any of Sandburg's Chicago Poems were to just remain silent for a moment, we would hear the faint night-time "humming and thrumming" of "a copper wire slung in the air." (cf. his Under A Telephone Pole).
He writes with a solemnity that avoids being morose, which is refreshing. But take note... "you will be thwarted every time, you try to catch a Sandburg rhyme." (they never rhyme). As for metre, his poems are in a free-verse very much reminiscent of Walt Whitman. The perfect poetry to read while feeding the pigeons, or otherwise commuting to and from the park.
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Title: Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters ISBN: 0451525302 Publisher: Signet Classics Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Cornhuskers (Dover Thrift Editions) by Carl Sandburg ISBN: 0486414094 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: 101 Great American Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by The American Poetry & Literacy Project ISBN: 0486401588 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by Robert Frost ISBN: 0486275507 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: 100 Best-Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions) by Philip Smith ISBN: 0486285537 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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