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#8 15 June 2024
Sandburg's wicker chair on a rock outcrop behind their North Carolina home. Carl Sandburg's Chair, Connemara Estate, North Carolina | Flickr
A Walk in the Woods with Nature's Poet
By John W. Quinley
Dear Readers, It would be a mischaracterization to associate Carl and
Paula Sandburg only with big city life in Chicago. They believed ardently that
fresh air and long, rugged hikes in the countryside would provide inspiration
and vitality all their lives. In a letter written by Carl to Paula early in
their courtship, he pictures a hike along Lake Michigan in poetic terms:
More than thirty years later, Paula ebulliently describes
the challenge and rousing views of a mountain trail at their farm in North
Carolina:
Sandburg voiced the love he felt
for the natural world in his poetry. Of the over one thousand poems in
The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg,
at least ten percent speak to an aspect of nature: times of day, the seasons,
and geographical features. In “Daybreak,” he explains that “Night is getting
ready to go / And Day whispers, ‘Soon now, soon.’” In “Stars,” he notes that
they “are too many to count,” and they “tell nothing—and everything.” And that
stars “are so far away they never speak / when spoken to. Stars are priceless
yet paid for.” In “Falltime,” he describes the “cold of a ripe oat straw, gold
of a southeast moon / Canada thistle blue and flimmering, larkspur blue.” In
“Prairie,” he declares that he “was born on the prairie and the milk of its
wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a
slogan.” And in the “Young Sea,” he says:
Sandburg valued the times he sat
alone in his wicker chair behind the farmhouse in North Carolina to reflect on
his life. He understood that:
The answers he sought were grounded in the natural world.
In his poem, “Who Am I,” he wrote “My head knocks against the stars. / My feet
are on the hilltops. / My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal
life. / Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play /
with pebbles of destiny.”
Thanks for reading,
John Quinley is the author of
Discovering Carl
Sandburg: The Eclectic Life of an American Icon and is a former docent at
the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
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