Friday, June 14, 2013

The Day Carl Sandburg Died

Carl Sandburg was born on a farm to Swedish parents in a small town in Illinois and worked a series of jobs as a laborer throughout the midwest, honing his craft as a writer while engaging with the many common folks he met, before becoming a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Soon he would become a voice for the Second City and the working man, and he would become internationally known for his poetry, an expansive anthology on Abraham Lincoln, and his folk singing. The Day Carl Sandburg Died is an excellent biography and nonfiction presentation which both informatively tells his life story, with affectionate commentary from Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel among others, and weaves much of his expressive and often haunting poetry.