Writings & Photos

Carl Sandburg and the American Songbag

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and musician. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as a major figure in contemporary literature and enjoyed broad appeal as “The Poet of the People.” At his death, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.” Click here to be directed to the National Park Service website.

LANDSCAPE
See the trees lean to the wind’s way of learning.
See the dirt of the hills shape to the water’s way of learning.
See the lift of it all go the way the biggest wind and the strongest water want it.

I SANG

I sang to you and the moon

But only the moon remembers. I sang

O reckless free-hearted free-throated rhythms,

Even the moon remembers them

And is kind to me.

UNDER A TELEPHONE POLE

I am a copper wire slung in the air,

Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.

Night and day I keep singing – humming and thrumming: 

It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and the want,

Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech,

In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and shine drying,

A copper wire. 

Carl Sandburg was a poet, journalist, historian, and social activist who won three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime.

As the father of three daughters, Sandburg also wrote numerous children’s books.

For more on Sandburg’s life, career and writings, visit the National Park Service links shown below.

Carl Sandburg

“Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”

    “I glory in the world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.”

      “It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness: to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask himself “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?”

      Carl Sandburg photograph by Paul Wright
      Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site children at goat barn
      Carl Sandburg National Historic Site Ranger Lisa and Coffee the goat
      Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site drive with stone wall
      LiliBear