Download Cornhuskers (Dover Thrift Editions) ePub

My negative rating applies to this edition's formatting. I believe this is from CreateSpace, but the publisher doesn't appear to be listed anywhere inside the book. ISBN 9781514303498

No table of contents, no real delineation of what apparently are different sections of the book, no attention to spacing of the poems.

If you just want to spend a few bucks to see if this work appeals to you, it's fine. But if you know you like Sandburg, I'd try to find another version, even if it is more expensive.

The single edition of 'Cornhuskers' (1918) is further evidence that Carl Sandburg's work is best served by 'The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg,' the most recent edition of which was published in 2003.

While the propagandistic 'Chicago Poem' (1916) focused mainly on the plight of the urban poor, 'Cornhuskers,' as its title suggests, is largely a meditation on the life and experience of the prairie farmer during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Sandburg was a poet who seemed to find personal meaning largely in the present moment, and thus, while 'Cornhuskers' records and occasionally celebrates the agricultural year and the people who live by it, death, mortality, and the transience of all things is a continuous motif.

These themes intermingle freely with a honest, often blunt candor about the violence and sacrifice inherent in survival. The everyman farmer addressed in 'Prairie,' for example, is calmly advised by nature to "Kill your hogs with a knife slit under the ear. Hack them with cleavers. Hang them with hooks in the hind legs."

Nor does the poet ignore the savagery of man and all creatures. 'Wilderness' acknowledges that "There is a wolf in me...fangs pointed for tearing gashes...a red tongue for raw meat...and the hot lapping of blood...I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness."

Sandburg was a poet of observation, and those reflected in 'Cornhuskers' are almost continually pensive: sorrow, loneliness, unfulfilled longing, and human isolation color the Midwestern landscape.

"The gloaming is bitter," he states in 'Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window,' not only in Omaha, but "in Chicago or Kenosha."

Sleeping dogs dream "Not any hate, not any love, not anything but dreams" in 'Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn,' unlike man.

The tradesman of 'Bricklayer Love' says, "I have thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store."

The speaker in 'Testament' serenely consigns his corpse to the earth, where the "nanny goats and billy goats of the shanty people eat the clover over my grave," for "I have had my chance to live with the people who have too much and the people who have too little and I chose one of the two and I have told no man why."

The poet of 'In Tall Grass' offers his bleached skull to the bees so that they may use it to build a honeycomb.

'Cool Tombs' addresses the marginality of human accomplishment and celebrity in the face of mortality, whether for Abraham Lincoln, Ulyyses Grant, Pocahontas, or "any streetful of people."

In 'Prairie,' Sandburg observes "the past is a bucket of ashes."

In one of 'Cornhuskers' most famous entries, 'Grass,' humanity is reminded that everyone and everything are impermanent and eventually forgotten: "I am the grass; I cover all."

As in 'Chicago Poems,' politicians, the wealthy, the upper classes, and other leaders of society come in for repeated harsh criticism. "Huntington" in 'Southern Pacific,' though dead in "a house six feet long," still blithely dreams of men addressing him as "Yes, sir."

'Palladiums' warns "Speak softly--the sacred cows may hear. Speak easy--the sacred cows must be fed."

'Profiteer' describes an honorary statue erected to "one who participated in the war vicariously and bought ten farms" with his spoils. 'Cornhuskers' was written during World War I, and 'The Four Brothers' identifies the "four big brothers" of the title--France, Russia, Britain, and America--as "hunting death."

In the vision of 'Cornhuskers,' man's meager hope arises from routine hard work, appreciation of the simple and the commonplace, and acceptance of the cycle of life. 'Caboose Thoughts' states "The sun, the birds, the grass - they know. They get along. We'll get along. It's going to come out all right - do you know?"

Sandburg encourages the reader to "Look at six eggs in a mockingbird's nest...look at songs hidden in eggs," and to appreciate, as he has, boys running "barefoot in the leaves" and "farmhands with their faces in fried catfish on a Monday morning."

Throughout, Sandburg speaks in the loose, conversational folk tone that was the hallmark of his work. Most of the poems have only a very light structure and appear spontaneously written, so that 'Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs' features lines such as "The story lags. The story has no connections. The story is nothing but a lot of banjo plinka planka plunks."

'Cornhuskers' can stand on its own, but works best when considered in immediate conjunction with later volumes 'Smoke And Steel' (1920), 'Slabs of the Sunburnt West' (1922), 'Good Morning, America' (1928), and 'The People, Yes' (1936), making 'The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg' the ideal vehicle for expressing his increasingly unappreciated vision.

I love Carl Sandburg's poetry.

Even with the absolutely atrocious spacing, and returns in this eBook his great words come through.

I would just really love if this eBook was edited again for clarity.

Some of the poems come out ok, but 1/2 or more have no returns and sentences on top of each other.

The poetry is far too good to have such poor formatting. Make sure you get the Mobi edition if buying on Kindle, the formatting is much, much better. The $1 edition (the 2009 one) is extremely hard to read.

I really liked this book, even though I felt "Chicago Poems" stronger in my heart.

If you like Carl Sandburg, then this is a good book of poetry to have in your library. It is vintage "salt of the earth" poetry.

Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 - July 22, 1967) in 1919 was one of the second recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection "Cornhuskers". The collection is divided into several sections including: "Cornhuskers"; "Persons Half Known"; "Leather Leggings"; "Haunts"; and "Shenandoah". Each of the sections has its own feel to it and the poems range from the long "Prairie" and "The Four Brothers" which bookend the entire collection, to the very short, such as "Cartoon". The subject or the poems also contrasts, though one would expect that in most collections. Lastly, time itself has added an additional contrast to the collection which I will discuss later.

"Cornhuskers" includes poems about life on the great plains of the United States. It opens with the masterful 11-page "Prairie", which is unlike any other poem in the section and only is approached in terms of scope by "The Four Brothers" which closes the collection. The poems in this section often deal with nature and history and the feel of life in the rural plains areas.

"Person's Half Known" includes poems about people of some renown, though who they are is not always readily apparent. "Chicago Poet" is about himself, "Fire-Logs" is about Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, and other people he writes about include the likes of Inez Milholland, Adelaide Crapsey, and others, and one can enjoy a trip through history in learning about the subjects of these poems.

"Leather Leggings" is an unusual section as it seems to have more to do with the activities of people, though some of the poems don't necessarily fit that loose definition. The poems deal with a very wide variety of professions, activities, and the products of those labors. As an example, "Clocks" deals with a variety of time-pieces and how they are used in different ways and "Flat Lands" deals with those in the real estate profession.

"Haunts" deals with those feelings and memories which one remembers throughout their life. Here there are poems remembering a love, a special time, one's lost childhood, music, faith, and much more.

The last section is "Shenandoah", which contains poems about war, and for whatever reason this section feels even more timeless than the rest of the book. Perhaps that is because this world so seldom knows real peace that one can easily identify with the feelings and images which these poems bring to mind.

This a tremendous collection of poems, which are filled with history, feelings, images, and so much more. It has but one weakness, and that is a word which has become so hateful that it pains the reader to run across it at any time, and certainly when reading such wonderful poetry. It appears fewer than 10 times in the book, and yet each time it does it gives one pause. It makes one wish for a new edition to remove it or change it, but at the same time one would never want to lose or change such art. Thus all one can do is to reflect on the mistakes of our past and appreciate how such words and hatred can damage even that which was created for the most benign purpose.