Carl Sandburg
1878-01-06 Galesburg, Illinois, EUA
1967-07-22 Flat Rock, Carolina do Norte, EUA
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Some Poems
Biography
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Books
Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967)
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry.
He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography
of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in
every pulse-beat."
Biography
Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, to parents of Swedish ancestry. At
the age of thirteen (During Eighth grade) he left school and began driving a
milk wagon. From the age of about fourteen until he was seventeen or
eighteen, he worked as a porter at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg.
After that he was on the milk route again for 18 months. He then became a
bricklayer and a farm laborer on the wheat plains of Kansas. After an interval
spent at Lombard College in Galesburg, he became a hotel servant in
Denver, then a coal-heaver in Omaha. He began his writing career as a
journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history,
biographies, novels, children's literature, and film reviews. Sandburg also
collected and edited books of ballads and folklore. He spent most of his life in
the Midwest before moving to North Carolina.
Sandburg volunteered to go to the military and was stationed in Puerto Rico
with the 6th Illinois Infantry during the Spanish–American War, disembarking
at Guánica, Puerto Rico on July 25, 1898. Sandburg was never actually called
to battle. He attended West Point for just two weeks, before failing a
mathematics and grammar exam. Sandburg returned to Galesburg and
entered Lombard College, but left without a degree in 1903.
He moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and joined the Social Democratic Party,
the name by which the Socialist Party of America was known in the state.
Sandburg served as a secretary to Emil Seidel, socialist mayor of Milwaukee
from 1910 to 1912.
Sandburg met Lilian Steichen at the Social Democratic Party office in 1907,
and they married the next year. Lilian's brother was the photographer
Edward Steichen. Sandburg with his wife, whom he called Paula, raised three
daughters.
Sandburg moved to Harbert, Michigan, and then suburban Chicago, Illinois.
They lived in Evanston, Illinois, before settling at 331 S. York Street in
Elmhurst, Illinois, from 1919 to 1930. Sandburg wrote three children's books
in Elmhurst, Rootabaga Stories, in 1922, followed by Rootabaga Pigeons
(1923), and Potato Face (1930). Sandburg also wrote Abraham Lincoln: The
Prairie Years, a two volume biography in 1926, The American Songbag
(1927), and a book of poems Good Morning, America (1928) in Elmhurst.
The family moved to Michigan in 1930. The Sandburg house at 331 W. York
Street, Elmhurst was demolished and the site is now a parking lot. The War
Years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Sandburg's Complete
Poems won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951.
He moved to a Flat Rock, North Carolina estate, Connemara, in 1945 and
lived there until his death in 1967.
Sandburg supported the civil rights movement, and contributed to the
NAACP.
Works
Carl Sandburg rented a room in this house where he lived for three years
while he wrote the poem "Chicago". It's now a Chicago landmark. Much of
Carl Sandburg's poetry, such as "Chicago", focused on Chicago, Illinois,
where he spent time as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day
Book. His most famous description of the city is as "Hog Butcher for the
World/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/Player with Railroads and the Nation's
Freight Handler,/Stormy, Husky, Brawling, City of the Big Shoulders."
Sandburg is also remembered by generations of children for his Rootabaga
Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy
stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories
were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American
childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights
were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with skyscrapers, trains,
corn fairies and the "Five Marvelous Pretzels".
Sandburg earned Pulitzer Prizes for his collection The Complete Poems of
Carl Sandburg, Corn Huskers, and for his biography of Abraham Lincoln
(Abraham Lincoln: The War Years). He recorded excerpts from the
biography and some of Lincoln's speeches for Caedmon Records in New York
City in May 1957. He was awarded a Grammy Award in 1959 for Best
Performance – Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy) for his
recording of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait with the New York Philharmonic.
Legacy
Carl Sandburg's boyhood home in Galesburg is now operated by the Illinois
Historic Preservation Agency as the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site. The
site contains the cottage Sandburg was born in, a modern visitor's center,
and small garden with a large stone called Remembrance Rock, under which
he and his wife Lilian's ashes are buried. Sandburg's home of 22 years in Flat
Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina, is preserved by the National Park
Service as the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. Carl Sandburg
College is located in Sandburg's birthplace of Galesburg, Illinois.
Carl Sandburg Village was a Chicago urban renewal project of the 1960s
located in the Near North Side, Chicago. Financed by the city, it is located
between Clark and LaSalle St. between Division Street and North Ave.
Solomon & Cordwell, architects. In 1979, Carl Sandburg Village was
converted to condominium ownership.
Elmhurst, Illinois, renamed the former Elmhurst Junior High School as 'Carl
Sandburg Middle School,' in his honor in 1960. Sandburg spoke at the
dedication ceremony. He resided at 331 S. York Street in Elmhurst from
1919 to 1930. The house was demolished and the site is a parking lot. In
1954, Carl Sandburg High School was dedicated in Orland Park, Illinois. Mr.
Sandburg was in attendance, and stretched what was supposed to be a one
hour event into several hours, regaling students with songs and stories.
Years later, he returned to the school with no identification and, appearing to
be a hobo, was thrown out by the principal. When he later returned with
I.D., the embarrassed principal canceled the rest of the school day and held
an assembly to honor the visit. In 1959, Carl Sandburg Junior High School
was opened in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Carl Sandburg attended the
dedication of the school. In 1988 the name was changed to Sandburg Middle
School servicing grades 6, 7, and 8. Originally built with a capacity for 1,800
students the school now has 1,100 students enrolled. Sandburg Middle
school was one of the first schools in the state of Minnesota to offer
accelerated learning programs for gifted students. In December 1961, Carl
Sandburg Elementary School was dedicated in San Bruno, California. Again,
Sandburg came for the ceremonies and was clearly impressed with the faces
of the young children, who gathered around him. The school was closed in
the 1980s, due to falling enrollments in the San Bruno Park School District.
In Neshaminy School District of lower Bucks County resides the secondary
institution Carl Sandburg Middle School. Located in the lobby is a finished
split tree trunk with the quote engraved lengthwise horizontally: "Man is
born with rainbows in his heart and you'll never read him unless you consider
rainbows". Another secondary school by the same name is located south of
Alexandria, Virginia, and is part of the Fairfax County Public Schools School
District. Sandburg Halls is a student residence hall at the University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The building consists of 4 high rise towers with a total
housing capacity of 2,700 students. It has an exterior plaque on Sandburg's
roles as an organizer for the Social Democratic Party and as personal
secretary to Emil Seidel, Milwaukee's first Socialist mayor. There are several
other schools named after Sandburg in Illinois, including those in Wheaton,
Orland Park, Springfield, Mundelein, and Joliet.
Eserleri:
In Reckless Ecstasy (1904)
Abe Lincoln Grows Up (N/A)
Incidentals (1904)
Plaint of a Rose (1908)
Joseffy (1910)
You and Your Job (1910)
Chicago Poems (1916)
Cornhuskers (1918)
Chicago Race Riots (1919)
Clarence Darrow of Chicago (1919)
Smoke and Steel (1920)
Rootabaga Stories (1922)
Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)
Rootabaga Pigeons (1923)
Selected Poems (1926)
Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926)
The American Songbag (1927)
Songs of America (1927)
Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928)
Good Morning, America (1928)
Steichen the Photographer (1929)
Early Moon (1930)
Potato Face (1930)
Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932)
The People, Yes (1936)
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)
Storm over the Land (1942)
Road to Victory (1942)
Home Front Memo (1943)
Remembrance Rock (1948)
Lincoln Collector: the story of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection (1949)
The New American Songbag (1950)
Complete Poems (1950)
The wedding procession of the rag doll and the broom handle and who was in
it (1950)
Always the Young Strangers (1953)
Selected poems of Carl Sandburg (1954)
The Family of Man (1955)
Prairie-town boy (1955)
Sandburg Range (1957)
Harvest Poems, 1910–1960 (1960)
Wind Song (1960)
Honey and Salt (1963)
The Letters of Carl Sandburg (1968)
Breathing Tokens (poetry by Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg)
(1978)
Ever the Winds of Chance (1983)
Carl Sandburg at the movies : a poet in the silent era, 1920–1927 (1985)
Billy Sunday and other poems (1993)
Poems for children nowhere near old enough to vote (1999)
Abraham Lincoln : the prairie years and the war years (2007)