Chicago by Carl Sandburg (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

CHICAGO
by Carl Sandburg

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:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

SOURCE: “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg first appeared in Poetry (March 1914).

IMAGE: Poet Carl Sandburg visits a Chicago construction site, photograph by Leonard Bass (1957).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Numbers Man, poem by Carl Sandburg

NUMBER MAN
by Carl Sandburg

         (for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach)

He was born to wonder about numbers.

He balanced fives against tens
and made them sleep together
and love each other.

He took sixes and sevens
and set them wrangling and fighting
over raw bones.

He woke up twos and fours
out of baby sleep
and touched them back to sleep.

He mananged eights and nines,
gave them prophet beards,
marched them into mists and mountains.

He added all the numbers he knew,
multiplied them by new-found numbers
and called it a prayer of Numbers.

For each of a million cipher silences
he dug up a mate number
for a candle light in the dark.

He knew love numbers, luck numbers,
how the sea and the stars
are made and held by numbers.

He died from the wonder of numbering.
He said good-by as if good-by is a number.

SOURCE: “Number Man” appears in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, 1970), available at Amazon.com.

SOURCE: Poetry (October 1947).

IMAGE: J.S. Bach postcard, available at ebay.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.

What is poetry? quotes by Carl Sandburg

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is sent during the moment.”

“Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.”

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.” 

PHOTO: Carl Sandburg with his friend Marilyn Monroe, circa 1960. The actress and the writer first met when Sandburg was in Hollywood working on a movie script and was assigned (and perhaps this is apocryphal) to use her dressing room as a temporary office. When Monroe later visited Sandburg in New York, she showed up with her hair a shade of platinum blonde that people thought she’d colored to match Sandburg’s white mane. Reflecting on Marilyn, Sandburg said: ”She had a mind out of the ordinary for show people. I found her well read. I gave her a book of my complete poetry. I wanted her to 
have it.” Find a partial list of books in Marilyn Monroe’s library here.

Theme in Yellow, poem by Carl Sandburg

THEME IN YELLOW
by Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Autumn Movement, poem by Carl Sandburg

AUTUMN MOVEMENT
by Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

PAINTING: “Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun” by Vincent van Gogh (1889).

BFFs: Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg

Photo: Carl Sandburg with his friend Marilyn Monroe, circa 1960.

The actress and the poet first met when Sandburg was in Hollywood working on a movie script and was assigned (and perhaps this is apocryphal) to use her dressing room as a temporary office. When Monroe later visited Sandburg in New York, she showed up with her hair a shade of platinum blonde that people thought she’d colored to match Sandburg’s white mane. Reflecting on Marilyn, Sandburg said: ”She had a mind out of the ordinary for show people. I found her well read. I gave her a book of my complete poetry. I wanted her to have it.” 

Jazz Fantasia, poem by Carl Sandburg with art by Henri Matisse

JAZZ FANTASIA
by Carl Sandburg

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.
 
Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy
tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-
husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.
 
Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,
moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a
racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!
you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,
tin cans — make two people fight on the top of a stairway
and scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch tumbling down
the stairs.
 
Can the rough stuff…now a Mississippi steamboat pushes
up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo…and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars …a red moon rides
on the humps of the low river hills….go to it, O jazzmen.

Illustration: “Icarus” from Jazz, a book of 100 prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse published in 1947. Copies available at Amazon.com.

Summer Stars, poem by Carl Sandburg

SUMMER STARS
by Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 

Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 

So near you are, summer stars, 

So near, strumming, strumming, 

So lazy and hum-strumming.

Summer Grass, poem by Carl Sandburg

SUMMER GRASS
by Carl Sandburg

Summer grass aches and whispers
It wants something; it calls and it sings; it pours
            Out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow
            Coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.

Purple Martins, poem by Carl Sandburg

PURPLE MARTINS
By Carl Sandburg

If we were such and so, the same as these,

maybe we too would be slingers and sliders,

tumbling half over in the water mirrors,

tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun,

tumbling our purple numbers.
 
Twirl on, you and your satin blue.

Be water birds, be air birds.

Be these purple tumblers you are.
 
Dip and get away

From loops into slip-knots,

Write your own ciphers and figure eights.

It is your wooded island here in Lincoln Park.

Everybody knows this belongs to you.
 
Five fat geese

Eat grass on a sod bank

And never count your slinging ciphers,

your sliding figure eights.
 
A man on a green paint iron bench,

Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book,

And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots,

And looks at you and your sheaths of satin blue,

And slouches again and sniffs in the book,

And mumbles: It is an idle and a doctrinaire exploit.
 
Go on tumbling half over in the water mirrors.

Go on tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun.

Be water birds, be air birds.

Be these purple tumblers you are.

PAINTING: “Purple Martins” by John James Audubon