Paradis | October 18, 2009
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor’s breast
And the harbor’s eyes.
Paradis | October 12, 2009
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Paradis | October 12, 2009
Carl August Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, the son of Swedish immigrants August and Clara Anderson Sandburg, and was called Charlie by the family. The elder Sandburg, a blacksmith’s helper, purchased a cottage in 1873. A year later the Sandburgs sold the small cottage in favor of a larger house in Galesburg.
He worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat, and shined shoes before travelling as a hobo in 1897. Working and travelling greatly influenced his writing and political views.
When the Spanish American War broke out in 1898 Sandburg volunteered for service, and at the age of twenty was ordered to Puerto Rico. When he returned later that year, he entered College, supporting himself as a call fireman. While at Lombard, Sandburg joined the Poor Writers’ Club, an informal literary organization whose members met to read and criticize poetry.
Sandburg met Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908. The responsibilities of marriage and family prompted a career change. Sandburg returned to Illinois and took up journalism. For several years he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Behind the home he was born in, stands a small wooded park. There, beneath Remembrance Rock, lie the ashes of Carl Sandburg, who died in 1967.
Paradis
Paradis | October 5, 2009
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
~Carl Sandburg
