The People, Yes Carl Sandburg Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878 –July 22, 1967), American poet, historian, novelist, and folklorist. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois by Swedish parents and died in Flat Rock, North Carolina. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat." He was a successful journalist, poet, historian and autobiographer. During the course of his career, Sandburg won three Pulitzer Prizes, one for history and two for poetry. Much of his poetry focused on Chicago, Illinois, such as Chicago", where he spent time as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. 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, City of the Big Shoulders." During the Spanish-American War, Sandburg enlisted in the 6th Illinois Infantry. Following a brief (two week) career as a student at West Point with Douglas MacArthur, Sandburg got married in 1908. From 1912 to 1928, he lived in Chicago and nearby Evanston. During this time he began work on his series of biographies on Abraham Lincoln, which would eventually earn him his Pulitzer Prize in history (for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 1940) He is also beloved by generations of children for his Rutabaga Stories, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own two daughters. The Rutabaga 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, and corn fairies. His home of 22 years in Flat Rock, North Carolina is preserved by the National Park Service as a national historic site. Carl Sandburg College is located in Sandburg's birthplace of Galesburg, Illinois. The People, Yes Carl Sandburg         The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on.         They will be tricked and sold again and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.         The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback, You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it. The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas. The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic, Is a vast huddle with so many units saying:         “I earn my living.         I make enough to get by         And it takes all my time.         If In had more time         I could do more for myself and maybe for others.         I could read and study         And talk things over And find out more things.         It takes time. I wish I had the time.”                         .   .   .                 The people know the salt of the sea                 and the strength of the winds                 lashing the corners of the earth.                 The people take the earth                 as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.                 Who else speaks for the Family of Man?                 They are in tune and step                 with constellations of universal law. In the darkness with a great bundle of grief the people march. In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:         “Where to?  What next?” The People, Yes Review questions Recalling 1.      What happens to the “learning and blundering people”? 2.      What could the people do if they had more time? 3.      (a) What do the people know? (b) As what do they “take the earth”? 4.      (a) When do the people march?  (b) What do they bring with them? Interpreting 5.      (a) What details suggest that this poem is about working class people?  (b) What is the speaker’s attitude toward these people? 6.      What does the poem suggest are the reasons why people “live on,” while animals such as the mammoth became extinct? Applying 7.      What is the significance that this poem was written during the Great Depression? 8.      How does this poem show people’s resiliency?