There are all kinds of Anniversaries … by Jude Genereaux

Norbert Blei et Sandburg’s Birthplace

There are all kinds of Anniversaries …

Some are dark. Some hover over us, follow us about, rest on our shoulder like puffy clouds of longing and memory. April 23rd is a major accompaniment in my life.

I heard a program recently on “Radio Lab”/ NPR on the topic of death and the afterlife. And what it means in our culture. How we deal with it. How we honor it.

What I took away with me was a work of David Eagleton’s, commenting on the beliefs of another culture that death comes to us three times. The first is when the spirit leaves the body and we witness the change that instantaneously comes … the stillness, the peace, the release of “what was”. If we’ve been blessed to be with the one we love when they fly free, that moment will never be forgotten, but treasured in the very depth of our soul.

The second death comes when the body that is left behind is taken from us in the act of burial, and the remains cared for in whatever manner our beliefs lead us to. We then have nothing left but tombstones, our destinations for grief, and our memories. The final commemorations of honor and love.

But then comes a third death – this reported final death is marked by “that moment sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” This notion comes from Eagleman’s essay on the afterlife, “Metamorphosis”, which goes into detail describing the waiting time between first and last deaths, and his imagining of meaning.

For as notable a writer as Norbert Blei – I envision he will be in this waiting zone for a long time to come. His written work, his teaching and the impact he made on his communities, both in Chicago and Door County, will live for years yet to come. He left behind a loving family and legions of readers, students and friends who love him. His writing studio – the very Coop itself – will bring others to know and honor our Norbert. He may even become weary of “waiting” … anxious to move on to the next mystery.

Norbert left us on April 23, 2013, but remains alive in ways of the heart and soul where we hold our Beloveds, forever. I will remember to say his name out loud every breathing day left of my own life. — Jude Genereaux

“The love between two people when confronting death
is a force of nature nothing can take away from them.”
~Dr. Ira Block WPR

markowski | stafford | sandburg | three poems on july 4th

Poetry Dispatch No. 246 | July 4, 2008

Three Poems on July 4th
Markowski/Stafford/Sandburg

independence day
the dulled point
of
grandpa’s foxhole shovel

-by Ed Markowski

Allegiances by William Stafford

It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked–
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.

Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.

Fourth of July Night by Carl Sandburg

The little boat at anchor in black water sat murmuring to the tall black sky
A white sky bomb fizzed on a black line.
A rocket hissed it’s red signature into the west.
Now a shower of Chinese fire alphabets,
A cry of flower pots broken in flames,
A long curve to a purple spray, three violet balloons—
Drips of seaweed tangled in gold, shimmering symbols of mixed numbers,
Tremulous arrangements of cream gold folds of a bride’s wedding gown—
A few sky bombs spoke their pieces, then velvet dark.
The little boat at anchor in black water sat murmuring to the tall black sky.

carl sandburg | father to son

Poetry Dispatch No. 238 | June 9, 2008

Poems for the Father #2

in celebrations of Father’s Day, June 15, 2008

Father to Son by Carl Sandburg

A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
‘Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.’
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
‘Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.’
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.

From THE PEOPLE, YES by Carl Sandburg

Some selected Carl Sandburg recordings and books:

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois of Swedish parents and died at his home, named Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg “indubitably an American in every pulse-beat.” He was a successful journalist, poet, historian, biographer, and autobiographer. During the course of his career, Sandburg won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years) and one for his collection The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg.

During the Spanish-American War, Sandburg enlisted in the 6th Illinois Infantry, and he participated in the landing at Guánica on July 25, 1898 during the invasion of Puerto Rico. Following a brief (two-week) career as a student at West Point, Sandburg chose to attend Lombard College in Galesburg. He left college without a degree in 1902.

Sandburg lived for a brief period in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during which he became a member of the Social Democratic Party and took a strong interest in the socialist community. He worked as a secretary to Mayor Emil Seidel, the first socialist mayor in the United States.

Sandburg met Lilian Steichen, sister of the famed photographer, Edward Steichen, at the Social Democratic Headquarters. Lilian (nicknamed “Paus’l” by her mother and “Paula” by Carl) and Carl were married in 1908; they would go on to have three daughters. Sandburg moved to Harbert, Michigan. From 1912 to 1928 he lived in Chicago, nearby Evanston and Elmhurst. During this time he began work on his series of biographies on Abraham Lincoln, which would eventually earn him his Pulitzer Prize in history (for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 1940).

In 1945, the Sandburg family moved from the Midwest, where they’d spent most of their lives, to the Connemara estate, in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Connemara was ideal for the family, as it gave Mr. Sandburg an entire mountain top to roam and enough solitude for him to write. It also provided Mrs. Sandburg over 30 acres of pasture to raise and graze her prize-winning dairy goats.

Much of Carl Sandburg’s poetry, such as “Chicago”, focused on Chicago, Illinois, where he spent time as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Day Book. His most famous description of the city is as “Hog Butcher for the World/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler,/Stormy, Husky, Brawling, and City of the Big Shoulders.”

Sandburg is also beloved by generations of children for his Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg’s desire for “American fairy tales” to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies and the “Five Marrrrvelous Pretzels”.

Sandburg was awarded a Grammy Award in 1959 for Best Performance – Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy) for his recording of Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with the New York Philharmonic.

Here is an incomplete list of books and anthologies published by Sandburg:

• * In Reckless Ecstasy (1904) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
• * Incidentals (1904) (poetry and prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
• * Plaint of a Rose (1908) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
• * Joseffy (prose) (1910) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
• * You and Your Job (1910) (prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
• * Chicago Poems (1916) (poetry)
• * Cornhuskers (1918) (poetry)
• * Chicago Race Riots (1919) (prose) (with an introduction by Walter Lippmann)
• * Clarence Darrow of Chicago (1919) (prose)
• * Smoke and Steel (1920) (poetry)
• * Rootabaga Stories (1920) (children’s stories)
• * Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) (poetry)
• * Rootabaga Pigeons (1923) (children’s stories)
• * Selected Poems (1926) (poetry)
• * Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) (biography)
• * The American Songbag (1927) (folk songs)
• * Songs of America (1927) (folk songs) (collected by Sandburg; edited by Alfred V. Frankenstein)
• * Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928) (biography [primarily for children])
• * Good Morning, America (1928) (poetry)
• * Steichen the Photographer (1929) (history)
• * Early Moon (1930) (poetry)
• * Potato Face (1930) (children’s stories)
• * Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932) (biography)
• * The People, Yes (1936) (poetry)
• * Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) (biography)
• * Storm over the Land (1942) (biography) (excerpts from Sandburg’s own Abraham Lincoln: The War Years)
• * Road to Victory (1942) (exhibition catalog) (text by Sandburg; images compiled by Edward Steichen and published by the Museum of Modern Art)
• * Home Front Memo (1943) (essays)
• * Remembrance Rock (1948) (novel)
• * Lincoln Collector: the story of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection (1949) (prose)
• * The New American Songbag (1950) (folk songs)
• * Complete Poems (1950) (poetry)
• * The wedding procession of the rag doll and the broom handle and who was in it (1950) (children’s story)
• * Always the Young Strangers (1953) (autobiography)
• * Selected poems of Carl Sandburg (1954) (poetry) (edited by Rebecca West)
• * The Family of Man (1955) (exhibition catalog) (introduction; images compiled by Edward Steichen)
• * Prairie-town boy (1955) (autobiography) (essentially excerpts from Always the Young Strangers)
• * Sandburg Range (1957) (prose and poetry)
• * Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 (1960) (poetry)
• * Wind Song (1960) (poetry)
• * Honey and Salt (1963) (poetry)
• * The Letters of Carl Sandburg (1968) (autobiographical/correspondence) (edited by Herbert Mitgang)
• * Breathing Tokens (poetry by Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg) (1978) (poetry)
• * Ever the Winds of Chance (1983) (autobiography) (started by Sandburg, completed by Margaret Sandburg and George Hendrick)
• * Carl Sandburg at the movies : a poet in the silent era, 1920-1927 (1985) (selections of his reviews of silent movies – collected and edited by Dale Fetherling and Doug Fetherling)
• * Billy Sunday and other poems (1993) (edited with an introduction by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick)
• * Poems for children nowhere near old enough to vote (1999) (compiled and with an introduction by George and Willene Hendrick)

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