Poets Reading Poetry: Carl Sandburg

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.







A farm laborer, a bricklayer, a hotel servant, a coal heaver, a milkman--all positions once held by Carl Sandburg before his writing career began. It's the sort of life nearly impossible to achieve--to simply live--in the 21st century and still become a lauded writer. Whereas today's writers often huddle in academia, a hundred years ago there were some like Sandburg who ventured outside the hallowed halls of ivy and rote memorization and experienced all versions of humanity up close.

After some time hopscotching around careers, Sandburg became a journalist for the Chicago Daily News, which brought him across stories and people unique to each day he worked. Journalism influenced his creative writing in later years, where Sandburg's poetry often took small moments and encounters from the newspaper life and found beauty in the minutia.

At the time of Sandburg's peak popularity, Robert Frost was considered the grand marshal of America's poetry parade. Indeed, despite being nearly the same age as Frost (with both men having nearly identical shocks of white hair atop their heads), Sandburg won the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal in 1952. And while Sandburg won three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime (including one at the age of 73), only Robert Frost won more (four) as a poet. Always the bridesmaid, Sandburg seemingly was content to never be the bride.

While Sandburg was on television routinely in the 1950s, there are few recordings of him actually reading his own work. The video above is audio of him reading the lilting, brief poem of his titled Grass (ignore the visual part of the video, and simply listen). Sandburg added the location of Stalingrad to the poem in this recording, which doesn't appear in the original poem printed below--but it's his poem, so he can see fit to edit it on the fly if he so chooses.

Whereas most poets come across as monotone while reading their works, Sandburg inflects with a hint of rhythm in his voice, of audible peaks and valleys, most likely a result of his enjoyment playing folk music as well.

That's right. A farm laborer, a bricklayer, a hotel servant, a coal heaver, a milkman...and folk musician, too.


Grass,  by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. 
Shovel them under and let me work— 
                                          I am the grass; I cover all. 

And pile them high at Gettysburg 
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 
Shovel them under and let me work. 
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: 
                                          What place is this? 
                                          Where are we now? 

                                          I am the grass. 
                                          Let me work.