Grass by Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg – Chicago Poems

Cover of Chicago Poems

Carl Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. Two years later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year-old author found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him international acclaim.

English: I took photo with Canon camera in Hereford, TX. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carl Sandburg worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school following his graduation from eighth grade in 1891 and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat in Kansas, and shined shoes in Galesburg’s Union Hotel before traveling as a hobo in 1897.

Sandburg’s experiences working and traveling greatly influenced his writing and political views. He saw first-hand the sharp contrast between rich and poor, a dichotomy that instilled in him a distrust of capitalism.

Read the Poem entitled   MAG

Carl Sandburg: His Life, His Poetry, His Cause: Art with Purpose, Art for the People, Art for a Country!

What can be gained from poetry? As Carl Sandburg proves, poetry can be used as a vehicle for social reform. 

I made this documentary as part of an English project and editted it on PowerDirector 9.0.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article is about the writer. For the passenger train service, see Carl Sandburg (train).

Carl Sandburg
Sandburg in 1955
Born	January 6, 1878 Galesburg, Illinois
Died	July 22, 1967 (aged 89) Flat Rock, North Carolina
Occupation	Journalist, author
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Swedish
Alma mater	Lombard College
Notable work(s)	Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Rootabaga Stories
Notable award(s)	Three Pulitzer Prizes
Spouse(s)	Lilian Steichen
Children	Margaret, Helga, and Janet

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He was the recipient of threePulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and another for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Sandburg “indubitably an American in every pulse-beat”.

Four Preludes to Playthings of the Wind (from Smoke and Steel. 1922.)”: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Four Preludes to Playthings of the Wind
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Smoke and Steel. 1922.

1.
The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2.
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

3.
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
… and the only listeners left now
… are … the rats … and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, “Caw, caw,”
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:

We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.

4.
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

 http://www.anapsid.org/carlsandburg.html

“Nothing can stop the ravages brought about by the passage of time, with its wear on things…Ultimately it’s the great Wind that’s left!” 

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The Weakness of Voting in the US: Big Businesses, Not the People, Control Elections & the Elected

 

“The classical theories of democracy way underestimate the costs facing ordinary voters as they actually try to control the State.You got to find out what it’s doing;…you got to try to push [your preferences] across in voting; & then you got to monitor what they actually do if they live up to their campaign promises; and if they don’t, you then have to do something to force them back on the course. It’s that last stage that’s the hardest. … If ordinary voters can’t easily afford those costs typically, then who can? The answer is: rich people, businesses. … If you want to control the State, you better have some fairly serious party & press mechanisms that work pretty well: In effect, YOU need to be financing the election campaigns.”

Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at UMass Boston, & author of “Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Parties and the Logic of Money Driven Politics”

Watch the whole documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwbKcVy6JWE
http://goldenruledocumentary.blogspot.com

For other interviews with Ferguson, see http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=24C418029E252057

Thomas Ferguson (academic)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Thomas Ferguson
Born	1949
Fields	Political science
Institutions	University of Massachusetts Boston, MIT, University of Texas, Austin
Alma mater	Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Known for	Investment theory of party competition
Influences	Adam Ferguson[1]

Thomas Ferguson (born 1949) is an American political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within ahistorical perspective. He is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a member of the advisory board forGeorge Soros‘ Institute for New Economic Thinking. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. A contributing editor for The Nation and a contributing writer to The Huffington Post, he is a frequent guest and economic commentator on numerous radio and television programs. He is known for his investment theory of party competition.  More…

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Today’s Quotation: Francis Bacon (1561-1626) on Virtue and Character and Moral Compass

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others; for men’s minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one will prey upon the other.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Discuss

Reclaim Democracy – The Powell Memo

 

Reclaim Democracy – The Powell Memo (Click to access the Powell Memo)

(also known as the Powell Manifesto)

Powell Memo published August 23, 1971 

This page and our introduction were published April 3, 2004

 Introduction

In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S.  More…

 

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Today’s Birthday: HANS CHRISTIAN ØRSTED (1777)

Hans Christian Ørsted (1777)

Ørsted was a Danish physicist and chemist. In 1820, he discovered that electric current passing through a wire can deflect a nearby compass needle, a phenomenon that inspired the development of electromagnetic theory. His 1820 discovery of piperine, one of the pungent components of pepper, was an important contribution to chemistry. In 1824, he founded a society devoted to the spread of scientific knowledge among the general public. What unit of measurement was named after him? More… Discuss

This Day in History: BRITISH TROOPS ARE DEPLOYED IN NORTHERN IRELAND (1969)

 

British Troops Are Deployed in Northern Ireland (1969)

In August 1969, tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland came to a head in the predominantly-Catholic Bogside neighborhood of Londonderry. For days, fighting raged with Catholic residents on one side and police and Protestant residents on the other. On August 14, British troops were deployed to restore order. Some consider that day to be the definitive beginning of the decades-long conflict known as The Troubles. How did residents react to the arrival of the army? More… Discuss

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Education For Whom and For What? (University of Arizona – Noam Chomsky’s Lecture) Restore preservation of the Commons)

Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist, spoke at the University of Arizona on Feb. 8, 2012. His lecture, “Education: For Whom and For What?” featured a talk on the state of higher education, followed by a question-and-answer session. 

Chomsky, an Institute Professor and a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked for more than 50 years, has been concerned with a range of education-related issues in recent years. Among them: How do we characterize the contemporary state of the American education system? What happens to the quality of education when public universities become more privatized? Are public universities in danger of being converted into facilities that produce graduates-as-commodities for the job market? What is the role of activism in education? With unprecedented tuition increases and budget struggles occurring across American campuses, these are questions that are more relevant than ever.

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Danse Macabre 2010 ( Saint-Saëns ) @ 1:20AM, August 14, 2012

 

• Artist: Luben Yordanoff, Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, Camille Saint-Saëns

  Danse Macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based in an old French superstition. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin.

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Bernard Herrmann – Psycho (theme)

Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The screenplay by Joseph Stefano is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch.Wikipedia

Release date: June 16, 1960 (initial release) Director: Alfred Hitchcock MPAA rating: R Music: Bernard Herrmann Screenplay: Joseph Stefano