Poems for the people

The 73 previously uncollected Sandburg poems that George and Willene Hendrick offer here are weaker than anything in their revisionary Selected Poems (1996) of Sandburg. Thanks to their unpretentious commentary, however, the 73 become windows further revealing a fascinating, archetypal American. The son of humble Swedish immigrants, Sandburg started working at 13 yet managed, after hoboing and going to war (the Spanish-American), to attend college and become a famous author, folksinger, and lecturer. He began writing poetry in the 1910s, when he was a radical socialist, a stance he modified in the wake of the second Wilson administration's severe persecution of the Left. Since most of these poems date from that time, and since several were withheld from earlier publication because of their fervor, they give us Sandburg-as-radical straight. Never much of a Marxist, Sandburg very appealingly railed against political lying and greedy, brutal capitalists. The few later selections show that he never lost his populist sympathies; especially gratifying in this respect is a good smack at the academic cult of Henry James. --Ray Olson