Some Carl Sandburg from The Blackbirch Treasury of American Poetry

It is Game Day here at my library, and our most excellent children's librarian is playing Trouble with the children. I saved her from Candy Land by asking her to recommend a poetry book, not having thought of anything on my own for Poetry Friday. So I have just spent the last 15 minutes enjoying The Blackbirch Treasury of American Poetry (2001).

Here are the things that make this a good book:
-- it doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive anthology. The editors appear to have chosen their six favorite poets (Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)and have included enough poems for each to make each section long enough for a stand alone book.
-- it is an anthology for children, and so is illustrated, with muted pictures that complement, rather than compete with, the text.
--the editors had good taste, and I like the majority of the poems they chose.

I'm not that familiar with Carl Sandburg, and I especially enjoyed reading some of his poems that were new to me, such as this one:

Landscape

See the trees lean to the wind's way of learning,
See the dirt of the hills shape to the water's
way of learning
See the lift of it all go the way the biggest
wind and the strongest water want it.

I like "the wind's way of learning," although I am not sure I like the sentiment of the last bit--too imperialist.

Here's another:

I Sang

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers,
I sang
O reckless free-hearted
free-throated rhythms,
Even the moon remembers them,
And is kind to me.


The Poetry Friday roundup is at Kelly's house today