I thought I liked Sandburg. I read
Maybe many years ago and it seemed funny, witty and different. And short, by all means. (Not in this volume)
Maybe he believes me, maybe not.
Maybe I can marry him, maybe not.
Maybe the wind on the prairie,
The wind on the sea, maybe,
Somebody, somewhere, maybe can tell.
I will lay my head on his shoulder
And when he asks me I will say yes,
Maybe.
At times, reading
Chicago Poems feels like reading prose; not the short and witty stuff I expected. The city gets mythical proportions with its factories where people work for 6 dollars a week, the skyscrapers, the bridges, the subway, the cripples, the girl who's killed by the fire a.s.o. I cannot understand poets' fascination for the country, the land, the city, whatever. Thankfully, not all the poems are devoted to Chicago. Take
At A Window, for instance
GIVE me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
***
I was thinking of reading Plath's poetry before moving on to her journals, but now, I don't know, I might just skip it.
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I can understand why this didn't grab me when I was a child but all I have to say now is 'was he on acid, or what?'
'cause it might get stuck on the tip.
Luxembourg.Yes, Luxembourg. If you don't like that, I'll have to read something by Hugo Gernsback, another Luxembourgian-turned-American and the person for whom the Hugo Award in science fiction is named. Did you know that Luxembourg is where the Family of Man collection is now housed? Or that Carl Sandburg, who wrote the Prologue to the book, was Steichen's brother-in-law? Or that Leo Lionni, whom you think of as "The guy who did children's books about mice with construction paper illustrations," was the Art Director for this book? I thought not. Your knowledge of Luxembourg is woefully inadequate. You do remember that The Family of Man was one of the books on your hip great aunt's coffee table in the 1960's, though, right?The 1955 edition features over 500 photos, most of people, from 68 countries, making it an excellent fit for my Books of the World challenge. The black and white photos of a variety of human activities are interspersed with quotations from many cultures. A number of the cultures and countries depicted no longer exist in the form represented here. The photos are grouped thematically and associatively, the choice of photos highlighting the commonality of human emotion and experience. For example, the two-page spread of pages 58-59 shows a 12-person, multi-generational family group (I presume) from Bechuanaland, minimally garbed and looking into the camera. On the facing page, an agricultural family of 11 from "U.S.A." is similarly grouped and looking straight into the camera. Pages 94-95 present a circle of 18 photos of groups dancing in circles. There is also social commentary. A page of scientists faces a boy surrounded by the wreckage of buildings in Germany.If you're not familiar with this collection, culled from more than two million submitted photos, go find it and take a look. You'll recognize Arbus, Eisenstadt, Cartier-Bresson, Adams, Page, Doisneau, Lange and many Life photographers. You'll recognize some subjects (like Einstein and Alice Liddell) and photos (such as Lang's on the bottom of page 151). Others are simply emblematic of human experience, but far from generic.Yes, I'd like to see gay people and fewer people from the U.S. Nonetheless, it's a startlingly broad collection for 1955, and even more moving than when I first looked it about 40 years ago.
