Chicago Poems
List Price: $33.95
Price: $25.80
You Save: $8.15 (24%)
Seller said used book was in very good condition. Arrived with scribbles and notes over each and every page making it unreadable. Seller also charged lots of money for the book. I'd never buy anything again from this seller and hope Amazon takes it off their list.
Review of the Dover Thrift 'Chicago Poems (et al.)'
Although the title suggests a volume dedicted entirely to poems about Chicago, this book actually contains the Chicago peoms accompanied by a few other collections.
While I found the poems very enjoyable, I did not care for this edition. Dover Thrift seems interested merely in presenting works in plain print, without any sort of introduction or notes on the writing. I would seek out a better edition of Sandburg's poems--one with footnotes or endnotes to explain political/historical allusions, personal pscyhological motives, etc.
A classic.
I love the Dover Trift Editions. They're a bit flimsy, but for the price, they can't be beat. Carl Sandburg's poems paint a colorful, often exiting, and always memoramble picture of city life at the turn of the century. These poems are simple, honest, and without a drop of pretention. This is a good read for anyone, not just poetry fanatics; but don't take my word for it, check it out at your local library.
I sing of Chicago glad and big The people 'Yes'
Sandburg is direct and strong and clear. This collection of poems first published in 1916 has as its signature poem "Chicago''. Chicago, the toolmaker, meat butcher, stacker of wheat the great brawler of the cities is at once Sandburg's home and posture to the world. Sandburg can also write tenderly as of the famous "Fog" that comes in on 'little cats feet' and with moving power of love ( Tell me in the grave, if the lovers are the losers) and war( Shovel them high at Ypres... I am the dust I cover them all) .
He is a poet of the American experience, the American street and its people . And he is like the beloved Lincoln he would write a long biography of, a man of the people whose poetry is truly for the people.
The People Yes.
The People, Yes
Sadly, Chicago Poems (1916), the author's first published work, is the book for which self-styled folk poet Carl Sandburg is best remembered today. The collection takes a hard and unswerving look at the grim realities of urban life for the common man, funneled through the flume of the author's committed socialist ideological perspective. Such an approach to poetry may have been somewhat novel in the America of the time, and both history and critics have been kind to Sandburg's sympathetic portraits of human suffering.
But whether he is addressing "a dago shovelman," an immigrant who has forgotten the dignified being his ancestors in Europe or who can no longer recognize "the new-mown hay smell calling on the wind," a street walker with "haggard poems and desperate eyes," or a young woman burned to death in a factory fire, Sandburg continually adopts the simplistic notion that the lower economic strata of society is always victimized but virtuous, while governmental institutions, bosses of all stripes, the professional classes, and the wealthy are uniformly cruel, oppressive, exploitive, and, at best, indifferent.
Thus, Chicago Poems reads like a 132-page polemic with a very narrow political point of view. While many of the author's observations are poignantly insightful (such as the poverty-stricken family of a dead boy in 'The Right To Grief,' who are "glad it is gone, for the rest of the family will now have more to eat and wear"), the poems, when read together, take on an oppressively unbalanced character of their own.
In 'A Fence,' for example, "the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and wandering children looking for a place to play" stand outside the gates of a newly constructed "stone house on the lake front" built by a wealthy man, who, the poet infers, can be nothing but immoral, amoral, or corrupt. In the author's Usher-esque vision, nothing will be able to pass through the gates to the property except "Death and the Rain and Tomorrow." And tomorrow, for such a corrupt individual or family, will inevitably bring nothing but waves of bad conscience and fevered isolation. 'Soiled Dove' examines the life of a woman who "was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer," but who automatically becomes one by acquiescing to such a marriage, and who soon discovers her husband also loves "six other women," as if marital infidelity was limited exclusively to the upper economic classes. In contrast, 'Happiness' is confidently represented as "a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion," an image which may seem simultaneously naïve, patronizing, and condescending to many readers.
Occasionally, Sandburg wisely acknowledges that some portion of the tragedies of man's existence are simply inherent in the natural human life cycle. "The hand of God" also comes in for blame in several poems.
Chicago Poems is most effective when Sandburg bypasses social divisionalism--as he often did in his later volumes of poetry--and simply addresses the everyman in the individual. While these poems are often infused with a lyrical and tender sentimentality slightly reminiscent of James Whitcomb Riley, they also locate and acknowledge the beautiful within the tragedies that perpetually arise from human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality. In 'Dream In The Dusk,' the author warns that "tears and loss and broken dreams may find your heart at dusk," while 'Under The Harvest Moon' identifies "Death" as "the gray mocker, [who] comes to you as a beautiful friend who remembers." 'I Sang' describes a lover who has given up his heart to "you and the moon," but "only the moon remembers, and is kind to me."
Other poems have the more pronounced folk character of Sandburg's later volumes. The speaker in 'Theme In Yellow' is the pumpkin, who celebrates the paganistic dance of children around him "on the last day of October...singing ghost songs and love to the harvest moon...I am the jack-o-lantern with terrible teeth and the children know I am fooling."
The most recent edition of The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (2003), which contains Chicago Poems in its entirety, is 832 pages long, and provides its readership with the full range of Sandburg's original and often gloriously rich and sensual vision of life. It also contains works like 'At The Gates of Tombs,' from Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), in which Sandburg, "the crazy wild dreamer," more fully and maturely developed his political vision. Comparatively, the reductive, often despairing Chicago Poems reads like the immaturely polarized work that it is.
List Price:
Price: $25.80
You Save: $8.15 (24%)
Description
1916. Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. His work found beauty and glory in the simple America that surrounded him: the farms, industry, landscape, culture, and most importantly, the American people. Chicago Poems was Sandburg's first published book of poems. Among the dozens of poems in this collection are such well-known verses as Chicago, Fog, To a Contemporary Bunkshooter, Who Am I? and Under the Harvest Moon as well as many others. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.Customer Reviews
Seller liedSeller said used book was in very good condition. Arrived with scribbles and notes over each and every page making it unreadable. Seller also charged lots of money for the book. I'd never buy anything again from this seller and hope Amazon takes it off their list.
Review of the Dover Thrift 'Chicago Poems (et al.)'
Although the title suggests a volume dedicted entirely to poems about Chicago, this book actually contains the Chicago peoms accompanied by a few other collections.
While I found the poems very enjoyable, I did not care for this edition. Dover Thrift seems interested merely in presenting works in plain print, without any sort of introduction or notes on the writing. I would seek out a better edition of Sandburg's poems--one with footnotes or endnotes to explain political/historical allusions, personal pscyhological motives, etc.
A classic.
I love the Dover Trift Editions. They're a bit flimsy, but for the price, they can't be beat. Carl Sandburg's poems paint a colorful, often exiting, and always memoramble picture of city life at the turn of the century. These poems are simple, honest, and without a drop of pretention. This is a good read for anyone, not just poetry fanatics; but don't take my word for it, check it out at your local library.
I sing of Chicago glad and big The people 'Yes'
Sandburg is direct and strong and clear. This collection of poems first published in 1916 has as its signature poem "Chicago''. Chicago, the toolmaker, meat butcher, stacker of wheat the great brawler of the cities is at once Sandburg's home and posture to the world. Sandburg can also write tenderly as of the famous "Fog" that comes in on 'little cats feet' and with moving power of love ( Tell me in the grave, if the lovers are the losers) and war( Shovel them high at Ypres... I am the dust I cover them all) .
He is a poet of the American experience, the American street and its people . And he is like the beloved Lincoln he would write a long biography of, a man of the people whose poetry is truly for the people.
The People Yes.
The People, Yes
Sadly, Chicago Poems (1916), the author's first published work, is the book for which self-styled folk poet Carl Sandburg is best remembered today. The collection takes a hard and unswerving look at the grim realities of urban life for the common man, funneled through the flume of the author's committed socialist ideological perspective. Such an approach to poetry may have been somewhat novel in the America of the time, and both history and critics have been kind to Sandburg's sympathetic portraits of human suffering.
But whether he is addressing "a dago shovelman," an immigrant who has forgotten the dignified being his ancestors in Europe or who can no longer recognize "the new-mown hay smell calling on the wind," a street walker with "haggard poems and desperate eyes," or a young woman burned to death in a factory fire, Sandburg continually adopts the simplistic notion that the lower economic strata of society is always victimized but virtuous, while governmental institutions, bosses of all stripes, the professional classes, and the wealthy are uniformly cruel, oppressive, exploitive, and, at best, indifferent.
Thus, Chicago Poems reads like a 132-page polemic with a very narrow political point of view. While many of the author's observations are poignantly insightful (such as the poverty-stricken family of a dead boy in 'The Right To Grief,' who are "glad it is gone, for the rest of the family will now have more to eat and wear"), the poems, when read together, take on an oppressively unbalanced character of their own.
In 'A Fence,' for example, "the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and wandering children looking for a place to play" stand outside the gates of a newly constructed "stone house on the lake front" built by a wealthy man, who, the poet infers, can be nothing but immoral, amoral, or corrupt. In the author's Usher-esque vision, nothing will be able to pass through the gates to the property except "Death and the Rain and Tomorrow." And tomorrow, for such a corrupt individual or family, will inevitably bring nothing but waves of bad conscience and fevered isolation. 'Soiled Dove' examines the life of a woman who "was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer," but who automatically becomes one by acquiescing to such a marriage, and who soon discovers her husband also loves "six other women," as if marital infidelity was limited exclusively to the upper economic classes. In contrast, 'Happiness' is confidently represented as "a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion," an image which may seem simultaneously naïve, patronizing, and condescending to many readers.
Occasionally, Sandburg wisely acknowledges that some portion of the tragedies of man's existence are simply inherent in the natural human life cycle. "The hand of God" also comes in for blame in several poems.
Chicago Poems is most effective when Sandburg bypasses social divisionalism--as he often did in his later volumes of poetry--and simply addresses the everyman in the individual. While these poems are often infused with a lyrical and tender sentimentality slightly reminiscent of James Whitcomb Riley, they also locate and acknowledge the beautiful within the tragedies that perpetually arise from human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality. In 'Dream In The Dusk,' the author warns that "tears and loss and broken dreams may find your heart at dusk," while 'Under The Harvest Moon' identifies "Death" as "the gray mocker, [who] comes to you as a beautiful friend who remembers." 'I Sang' describes a lover who has given up his heart to "you and the moon," but "only the moon remembers, and is kind to me."
Other poems have the more pronounced folk character of Sandburg's later volumes. The speaker in 'Theme In Yellow' is the pumpkin, who celebrates the paganistic dance of children around him "on the last day of October...singing ghost songs and love to the harvest moon...I am the jack-o-lantern with terrible teeth and the children know I am fooling."
The most recent edition of The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (2003), which contains Chicago Poems in its entirety, is 832 pages long, and provides its readership with the full range of Sandburg's original and often gloriously rich and sensual vision of life. It also contains works like 'At The Gates of Tombs,' from Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), in which Sandburg, "the crazy wild dreamer," more fully and maturely developed his political vision. Comparatively, the reductive, often despairing Chicago Poems reads like the immaturely polarized work that it is.
