Carl Sandburg

The first thing to do before you read Carl Sandburg's poetry is to find a recording of him performing. After you've heard his distinctive swaying delivery, you'll have a built-in narrator whenever you meet up with his poems on the page. I teach my students to read a poem out loud because the sound will have a tremendous impact on how they perceive it, and this is especially true with Sandburg. Just listen. Hear the way he swings into a line, almost backs up, then swings in a little deeper? There's a beautiful rolling musicality to it. It's smoke from a smokestack and wind through the prairie--perfect for a man whose work deals with both that "tall bold slugger" of a city, Chicago, and the "cornsilk and the tassels" in the fields of his Illinois Farmer. If you made a painting of his delivery, I bet it would look like something by Thomas Hart Benton.

And--and!--Sandburg was once a guest on What's My Line? and people knew who he was. A poet, for God's sake.