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I’m so excited about this week’s prompt. My joy in poetry is discovery — whether through writing or reading. I feel like I found buried treasure this week, and I’m thrilled to share with you. I hope the combination of multiple loves — history, poetry and photography — is a good source of inspiration.
As I looked at poems on work, I came across Carl Sandburg again and again. I knew his name from the seminal work on Abraham Lincoln, but it turns out he won two of his three Pulitzer prizes for poetry.
President Lyndon Johnson said at his death, “Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”
What a eulogy!
I’m struck that not only was Sandburg America, that his voice, in some ways, still is America. A.E.F. is a prophetic dream just as true today as it was a century ago.
I’m fascinated with Sandburg’s depictions of work. Like Whitman, he chronicles ordinary life in the intricate details. But unlike Whitman, he doesn’t deify the ordinary. He celebrates and scorns, loves and abhors.
His poetry is simple, vivid and powerful. Insightful. Surprising. Each subject has an unexpected…
