Poet's Corner: More by Carl Sandburg

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

My favourite poem of Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg was this one and I couldn't find a cut-and-paste version but I liked it enough to print it out and type it. The other one I liked was called "Shadows Fall Blue on the Mountain," but I also can't find a cut-and-paste version of it, and it's too long to type.

Quotations by Carl Sandburg

Said the panama hat to the fedora.

"Sins have different prices in hell."

Said the fedora hat to the panama.

"Yeah, nickel and dime sins, silver dollar sins,
sins setting you back a century, a grand,
sins you can't settle under a million buck,
tin and aluminum sins, brass sins, copper, old gold,
pint and bushel sins, inch and mile sins,
calculated little teapot sins and roaring tornados."



High Moments by Carl Sandburg

Keep this flower to remember me by.

So she told him.

Keep this, remember me, remember.

Fold this flower where you never forget.

Put me by where time no longer counts.

Then come back to a sure remembering.



Night itself, night is one long dark flower.

She said night knows deep rememberings,

All flowers being some kind of remembering

and night itself folding up like

many smooth dark flowers.



Find me like the night finds.

She measured herself so.

Keep me like the night keeps

For I have night deeps in me.



Flesh is a doom and a prison.

Flesh jails those only flesh.

Air speaks nevertheless,

spray, fire, air,

thin voices beyond capture

save only in remembering

the luster of lost stars,

the search for a wafer of moon.



Let us talk it over long

and wear cream gold buttons

and be proud we have anger and pride together,

remembering high loveliness hovers in time

and is made of passing moments.



I have kept high moments.

They go round and round in me.

Comments

[debriswoman]

Thank you...the first...Quotations...is striking. “Silver dollar sins”

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I thought so, too. Not sure how many of those I have racked up already :)

[lunabee34]

Ha! Me too.

It's such a great image.

[ancientreader]

I feel like Carl Sandburg's reputation took a nosedive through most of my adult life -- at least, I rarely saw him mentioned as an interesting poet; but lately I've happened to look at poems of his and been startled by how original and strange and good they are. Like these, for example!

/still in that post-surgical opioid haze so don't expect much from me

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I think I only knew him from the Chicago poems, but I am glad I read Honey and Salt. There were few poems that wowed me as much as "Quotations" as a whole but there were many lines from various poems (stanzas or individual lines) which I thought were very thought-provoking or clever or whatever. So, I agree that he deserves more recognition that he gets.

/I am glad to hear it was not 'Game Over'!

[ancientreader]

LOL, I forgot about that! Poor mite, he was worried. :(

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

FYI, I don't want to overwhelm you with me stuff but I managed to read A Seditious Affair by K.J. Charles and OMG! You were right! So so right! It's the best smut I've read in a long, long time, and my only complaint is that there was too much plot. I wish it had been 200 pages of a dom and his sub doing their thing and bonding over William Fucking Blake. I almost cut myself because I couldn't get through 2 chapters of Case Histories but that's all forgotten. We're good. I think it will definitely change/improve/inspire me to write more d/s stuff.