Selected Poems - Softcover

Sandburg, Carl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156003961 ISBN 13: 9780156003964

Publisher: Ecco, 1996

Synopsis

This new collection of Sandburg’s finest and most representative poetry draws on all of his previous volumes and includes four unpublished poems about Lincoln. The Hendricks’ comprehensive introduction discusses how Sandburg’s life and beliefs colored his work and why it continues to resonate so deeply with americans today. Edited and with an Introduction by George and Willene Hendrick.

About this title

About the Author:

CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and again in 1951 for Complete Poems. Before becoming known as a poet, he worked as a milkman, an ice harvester, a dishwasher, a salesman, a fireman, and a journalist. Among his classics are the Rootabaga Stories, which he wrote for his young daughters at the beginning of his long and distinguished literary career.

Review:

Once he bestrode the American scene like a colossus, but while plenty of his work remains in print, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) is no longer much--or well--spoken of these days, especially as a poet. This new selection of his verse by two scholars, George and Willene Hendrick, who tracked down dozens of uncollected or unpublished Sandburg poems, may change that situation. It is superb, not a bum poem in it, even if one or another brings one up short with outdated slang or the use of the forbidden n-word (for the record, few white public figures have been ardenter champions of blacks than Sandburg). The Hendricks present 166 poems in sections reflecting Sandburg's concerns: "Chicago," "Lincoln," "African-Americans," "Love Poems," "Poems of Protest," etc. Sandburg's great inspiration was Whitman; no one else carried more of the tone and panhumanism of Leaves of Grass into the twentieth century than Sandburg. He was less spiritual and more political than Whitman, and his literary roots in urban reporting made for an imagery grittier, grayer, more documentary than Whitman's--an imagery, though, as striking, especially visually, as any that Sandburg's imagist peers--Amy Lowell, Pound, Williams--produced. Great stuff.
(Booklist - Ray Olson )

James Tate's Selected Poems seems more a career move than a purposeful publication. Tate's but in his 40's, and it's doubtful that his earlier books require or benefit from being culled for a selected edition. Nine of the poet's earlier collections remain inprint and available from university and independent publishers. While Tate's a solid and most productive poet, the necessities of luminous brilliance or the inaccessibility of earlier books that could justify Selected Poems at this time, is lacking. Books of this sort are an ironic mix of bulk and abbreviation, and unless one is genuinely familiar with a writer's work, "selecteds" make for erratic, disharmonious reading. Earlier volumes - and in Tate's case there are a number of good ones - are gleaned by poet or editor with certain poems retained and others omitted. Why such disregard for the books' merits and coherences? Why such disregard for the presumed essentialness of those available books of poetry? Tate's Selected Poems strikes this reviewer as an artistically careless act that renders healthy, intact books into lifeless, shapeless portions. Here, the cleverness and imagistic wit of the poet's surfaces dominate the poignant and lingering depths found in a memorable collection such as Absences, reissued within the last year. if you want to read James Tate in a rewarding manner pick up the Wesleyan, Yale, Ecco or Carnegie Mellon Press collections that are most readily available. (Independent Publisher )

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0156003961
• ISBN 13: 9780156003964
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320