Excerpt from Carl Sandburg's preface to 1950 edition of "Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg"

2007-04-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

"As years pass and experience writes new records in our mind life, we go back to some works of art we rejected in the early days and find values we missed. Work, love, laughter, pain, death, put impressions on us as time passes, and we brood over what has happened, praying it may be an 'exalted brooding.' Out of songs and scars and the mystery of personal development, we may get eyes that pick out intentions we had not seen before in people, in art, in books and poetry.

"Naturally, too, the reverse happens. What we register to at one period of life, what we find gay and full of fine nourishment at one time, we may find later has lost interest for us. A few masterpieces last across the years. We usually discard some. A few masterpieces are enough. Why this is so we do not know. For each individual his new acquisitions and old discards are different."

Later in this excerpt, Carl Sandburg says of himself, "I still favor several simple poems published long ago which continue to have an appeal for simple people." I wonder if anyone knows which of his poems were his favorites. One of my favorite Carl Sandburg poems is:

Explanations of Love

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends.

There is a touch of two hands that foils all dictionaries.

There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open hearth
furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

There are single careless bywords portentous as a
big bend in the Mississippi River.

Hands, eyes, bywords--out of these love makes
battlegrounds and workshops.

There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it
is never written till long afterward.

There are explanations of love in all languages
and not one found wiser than this:

There is a place where love begins and a place
where love ends--and love asks nothing.

Poetry of Carl Sandburg

Excerpt from Carl Sandburg's preface to 1950 edition of "Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg"