Much of Carl Sandburg's poetry, such as "
Chicago", focused on
Chicago, Illinois, where he spent time as a reporter for the
Chicago Daily News and the
Day Book. His most famous description of the city is as "Hog Butcher for the World/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat/Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler,/Stormy, Husky, Brawling, and City of the Big Shoulders."
Sandburg is also remembered by generations of children for his
Rootabaga Stories and
Rootabaga Pigeons, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies and the "Five Marrvelous Pretzels".
Sandburg was awarded a
Grammy Award in 1959 for
Best Performance - Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy) for his recording of
Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait with the
New York Philharmonic.
Here is an incomplete list of books and anthologies published by Sandburg:
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In Reckless Ecstasy (1904) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
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Incidentals (1904) (poetry and prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
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Plaint of a Rose (1908) (poetry) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
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Joseffy (prose) (1910) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
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You and Your Job (1910) (prose) (originally published as Charles Sandburg)
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Chicago Poems (1916) (poetry)
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Cornhuskers (1918) (poetry)
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Chicago Race Riots (1919) (prose) (with an introduction by Walter Lippmann)
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Clarence Darrow of Chicago (1919) (prose)
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Smoke and Steel (1920) (poetry)
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Rootabaga Stories (1920) (children's stories)
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Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) (poetry)
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Rootabaga Pigeons (1923) (children's stories)
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Selected Poems (1926) (poetry)
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Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) (biography)
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The American Songbag (1927) (folk songs)
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Songs of America (1927) (folk songs) (collected by Sandburg; edited by Alfred V. Frankenstein)
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Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928) (biography [primarily for children])
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Good Morning, America (1928) (poetry)
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Steichen the Photographer (1929) (history)
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Early Moon (1930) (poetry)
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Potato Face (1930) (children's stories)
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Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932) (biography)
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The People, Yes (1936) (poetry)
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Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) (biography)
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Storm over the Land (1942) (biography) (excerpts from Sandburg's own
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years)
*
Road to Victory (1942) (exhibition catalog) (text by Sandburg; images compiled by
Edward Steichen and published by the
Museum of Modern Art)
*
Home Front Memo (1943) (essays)
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Remembrance Rock (1948) (novel)
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Lincoln Collector: the story of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection (1949) (prose)
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The New American Songbag (1950) (folk songs)
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Complete Poems (1950) (poetry)
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The wedding procession of the rag doll and the broom handle and who was in it (1950) (children's story)
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Always the Young Strangers (1953) (autobiography)
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Selected poems of Carl Sandburg (1954) (poetry) (edited by Rebecca West)
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The Family of Man (1955) (exhibition catalog) (introduction; images compiled by
Edward Steichen)
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Prairie-town boy (1955) (autobiography) (essentially excerpts from
Always the Young Strangers)
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Sandburg Range (1957) (prose and poetry)
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Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 (1960) (poetry)
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Wind Song (1960) (poetry)
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Honey and Salt (1963) (poetry)
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The Letters of Carl Sandburg (1968) (autobiographical/correspondence) (edited by Herbert Mitgang)
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Breathing Tokens (poetry by Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg) (1978) (poetry)
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Ever the Winds of Chance (1983) (autobiography) (started by Sandburg, completed by Margaret Sandburg and George Hendrick)
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Carl Sandburg at the movies : a poet in the silent era, 1920-1927 (1985) (selections of his reviews of silent movies - collected and edited by Dale Fetherling and Doug Fetherling)
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Billy Sunday and other poems (1993) (edited with an introduction by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick)
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Poems for children nowhere near old enough to vote (1999) (compiled and with an introduction by George and Willene Hendrick)
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