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Billy Sunday And Other Poems

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While most of us may be familiar with Carl Sandburg the biographer, Sandburg the historian, Sandburg the folksinger and Sandburg the poet of "Fog" and "Chicago" fame, most of us are not familiar with Sandburg the antiwar activitist, Sandburg the capital punishment opponent, Sandburg the religious hippocracy muckraker and Sandburg the Socialist. This collection of early works, written while Sandburg was employed as a journalist, introduces us the the second Sandburg. Considered too graphic in content, too frank in language, too taboo in theme and too disturbing in imagery to be published during his lifetime, these poems show us a young, angry Sandburg before he was elevated to the status of literary icon and cultural treasure. As a high school history teacher, I use this collection to introduce my students to such diverse topics as racism, sexism, the "Eastland" disaster, the religious revivals and fundamentalism and the Sacco and Vanzetti trail. Anytime you can get adolescents to volunteer to read poems in class, as they do with these, the lesson plan has to be considered a success and the credit goes to Sandburg for his writings, which to this day provoke lively discussion and strike a powerful cord on the human condition with the common man. Your library is not complete with this brief volume.