Carl Sandburg
By Lee Bennett Hopkins

Sandburg wrote poetry about stars, striped cats, worms, war, bees, boxes, band concerts and about people -- men, women, children -- people like you and me.

A fine introduction to the incredible life and work of America's "Poet of the People" is Carl Sandburg: Adventures of a Poet by Penelope Niven (Harcourt, 2003). Niven, founder and director of the national Carl Sandburg Oral History Project, worked with the poet's family to produce this biography for younger readers, deftly interwoven with prose and poetry.

A legend is born
Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, IL to poor Swedish immigrant parents. After leaving school at the age of 13, he drove a milk wagon, worked on farms, painted houses – always observing people around him. Years later he became a journalist, a political organizer, a collector and singer of folk songs, historian, writer of children's and adult books and a master poet.

In 1945, he moved his family to Connemara, a farm in Flat Rock, NC, where he lived until his death. The farm, now a National Historic Site, is open to visitors.

He died on July 22, 1967 at the age of 89 and the following September, thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to honor him. President Lyndon Johnson issued a statement which in part read, "Carl Sandburg needs no epitaph. It is written for all time in the fields, the cities, the face and heart of the land he loved and the people he celebrated and inspired."

Recommended books
The Sandburg Treasury: Prose and Poetry for Young People (Harcourt, 1970). A treasury indeed, this volume includes his multi-faceted writing for children -- the complete "Rootabaga Stories," "Abe Lincoln Grows Up," "Prairie-Town Boy," "Early Moon" and "Wind Song." "Early Moon" begins with his must-read "Short Talk on Poetry," an exquisite little essay exploring "how little anybody knows about poetry, how it is made, what it is made of, who started it and why."

Rainbows Are Made: Poems by Carl Sandburg, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Harcourt, 1982). 70 poems grouped into six sections, each headed by one of Sandburg's own definitions of poetry appear in his award-winning anthology.

Lee Bennett Hopkins is a distinguished poet whose recent collections include Days to Celebrate (Greenwillow, 2005) and Oh No! Where Are My Pants? and Other Disasters (HarperCollins, 2005).