Carl Sandburg

1878-1967

Carl August Sandburg was the son of Swedish immigrants who settled in Galesburg, Illinois; his father was a machinist's blacksmith. The Sandburgs were very poor; Carl left school at the age of thirteen to work odd jobs, from laying bricks to dishwashing, to help support his family. At seventeen, he traveled west to Kansas as a hobo.

During the Spanish-American War, Sandburg enlisted in the 6th Illinois Infantry, and he participated in the landing at Guánica on July 25, 1898 during the invasion of Puerto Rico. Following a brief (two-week) career as a student at West Point, Sandburg chose to attend Lombard College, working for the fire department to support himself. Sandburg left college without a degree in 1902 and married Lilian Steichen, sister of the famed photographer, Edward Steichen, in 1908. He worked as advertising writer, roving reporter and organizer for the Social Democratic Party in Wisconsin. Sandburg lived for a brief period in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, working as a secretary to Mayor Emil Seidel, the first socialist mayor in the United States, before moving to Harbert, Michigan from 1910 to 1912.

He became famous as a poet in 1904. The first collection of his verse was “The Reckless Ecstasy”1. He condemned the First World War as a senseless massacre in such poems as “Killers” and “Liars”.

A liar takes the blood of the people

And drinks this blood with laugh and lie…

The liars met where the doors were locked.

They said to each other: Now for war.

The liars fixed it and told ‘em: Go.

He established his reputation with “Chicago Poems” (1916), and then “Cornhuskers” (1918). Soon after the publication of these volumes Sandburg wrote “Smoke and Steel” (1920), his first prolonged attempt to find beauty in modern industrialism. With these three volumes, Sandburg became known for his free verse poems celebrating industrial and agricultural America, American geography and landscape, and the American common people.

From 1912 to 1928, he lived in Chicago where Carl became an editorial writer for the Chicago “Daily News”. During this time he began work on his series of biographies on Abraham Lincoln, which would eventually earn him his Pulitzer Prize in history (1940). It was also during his years in the Chicago area and Milwaukee that Sandburg was a member of the Social Democratic Party and took a strong interest in the socialist community. The twenties saw Sandburg's collections of American folklore, the ballads in “The American Songbag” and “The New American Songbag” (1950), and books for children. These later volumes contained pieces collected from brief tours across America which Sandburg took each year, playing his banjo or guitar, singing folk-songs, and reciting poems.

In the 1930s, Sandburg continued his celebration of America with “Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow” (1932), “The People, Yes” (1936), and the second part of his Lincoln biography, “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939).

In 1945, the Sandburg family moved from the Midwest, where they'd spent most of their lives. Sandburg received a second Pulitzer Prize for his “Complete Poems” in 1950. His final volumes of verse were “Harvest Poems, 1910-1960” (1960) and “Honey and Salt” (1963). Carl Sandburg died in 1967.

In his verses he created images of the heroes of national-liberation movement – Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln. The central subject of his poetry is human work as a basis of life. In his poetry of the 20-30s he created images of contemporary working-class leaders.

Much of his 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."

LOST

Desolate and lone desolate – пустынный; lone - одинокий

All night long on the lake

Where fog trails and mist creeps, trail – след; mist – туман; creep - ползти

The whistle of a boat

Calls and cries unendingly,

Like some lost child

In tears and trouble

Hunting the harbor’s breast harbor - гавань

And the harbor’s eyes.

COMPREHENSION AND DISCUSSION:

1. What is the time and place of the poem?

2. What “calls and cries”? Why?

3. To what is the “crier” compared?

4. What is the ‘crier’ seeking?

5. What mood is created by the poem? What words help to create this mood?

6. To what is harbor compared? Why is this a fitting comparison?

7. What sound devices does the poet use? What are their aims in the poem?

8. In what ways can people get lost other than physically?

9. Explain how people, who are lost in any manner, are like children?

10. What’s the main idea of the poem?

SOUP

I saw a famous man eating soup.

I say he was lifting a fat broth broth - бульон

Into his mouth with a spoon.

His name was in newspapers that day

Spelled out in tall black headlines

And thousands of people were talking about him.

When I saw him,

He sat bending his head over a plate bend - сгибаться

Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon.

COMPREHENSION AND DISCUSSION:

1. Explain the contrast between who the man is and what he is doing. What does the poet want us to think about the famous man?

2. Name at least five types of people the man could be.

3. Why do you think the poem is called “Soup”?

4. What associations does the word ‘soup’ have for you?

5. What truths does the poet want us to discover for ourselves by focusing our attention on this man?

ROBERT FROST

1874-1963

Robert Frost is the most prominent representative of realistic trend in American poetry. Long before he became known as the greatest American poet of his time, Robert Frost worked as a farm-hand, a bobbin boy in a mill, a shoemaker, a teacher in country schools and an editor.

Frost was born in San Francisco, California, in a family of a journalist. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He entered Dartmouth College in 1892. Frost entered Harvard in his twenty-second year but in two years’ time left it and began farming and also teaching. But his head was full of poems. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper “The Independent”for $15.

In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. In 1912 Frost sold the farm and went to England with his family, where his first books “A Boy’s Will” (1913) and “North of Boston” (1914) were published and brought him fame. When in 1915 he returned to America, he found himself famous and well provided for. Thus, the most American of poets, Frost was first recognized not in his own country, but abroad. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book – including “New Hampshire” (1923), “A Further Range” (1936), “Steeple Bush” (1947), and “In the Clearing” (1962) – his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased. From 1916 to 1938, he was an English professor at Amherst College. He recited his work, “The Gift Outright”, at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and represented the United States on several official missions. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston.

Frost’s poems are simple and intelligible. They have neither complex metaphorical images, nor intricate symbols. A Man and nature, a land and a peasant who cultivates it - this is the world of Frost’s poetical images. The peasant labour made him meditative and gave philosophical depth to his poetry. Therefore, Frost’s language is richly aphoristic. Among his best-known poems are “The Tuft of Flowers”, “Birches”, “Dust of Snow”, “Mending Wall”, “October”.

He often wrote in the standard meter of blank verse (lines with five stresses) but ran sentences over several lines so that the poetic meter plays subtly under the rhythms of natural speech. The first lines of “Birches” (1916) illustrate this distinctive new approach to rhythm:

“When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain…”

And while Frost’s images and voice seem familiar and old, his observations of New England life have an edge of skepticism and irony that make his work, upon rereading, never as easy and carefree as it first appeared.

The themes of a village and uneasy life of American farmers occupy an important place in Frost’s poems. His poetry often brings forward the important philosophical problems about a connection of a man with nature, about the sense of human labour. In the center of Frost’s attention are always common, simple people.

Note three interesting facts about Robert Frost.

What is a common theme of Robert Frost poetry?

Why do you think Frost chooses the subjects and settings that he does? What does the rural setting provide for Frost that amore urban one would not? In what way is this setting appropriate for the plea or emotions Frost is attempting to express in his poetry?

Why was Frost America's most popular poet?

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

DISCUSSION:

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