35Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love-letters.

36Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

37Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks, waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.

38Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.

Acknowledgments

For permissions to publish, we are indebted to the Carl Sandburg Family Trust, Maurice C. Greenbaum and Philip G. Carson, Trustees, and to Robert Wedgeworth, University Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We are also indebted to Vicki Austin-Smith, Ruth Greenstein, and Sarah Longstaff for their continued help.

Original Publication Sources

All of the poems collected here, excluding the three previously unpublished Lincoln poems, originally appeared in the following volumes (books and poems listed in alphabetical order):

Billy Sunday and Other Poems, copyright © 1993 by Maurice C. Greenbaum and Frank M. Parker as Trustees of the Carl Sandburg Family Trust. Compilation, Introduction, and Notes copyright © 1993 by George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick: “Arms,” “Billy Sunday,” “Black Prophetess,” “Cleo,” “The Eastland,” “Eugene V. Debs,” “Ezra,” “Hawthorne,” “Hellcat,” “I Should Like to Be Hanged on a Summer Afternoon,” “In Blue Gown and in Black Satin Gown,” “An Interwoven Man and Woman Talked,” “Jerry,” “Legal Midnight Horn;” “Man, the Man-Hunter;” “Monday, One p.m.,” “Napoleon,” “Painted Fishes,” “Planked Whitefish,” “A Reporter in Debt,” “She Held Herself a Deep Pool for Him,” “Sherwood Anderson,” “Taking on Suds Men Talk,” “These Valleys Seem Old,” “Troth Tryst,” and “The Workingmen.”

Breathing Tokens, copyright © 1978 by Maurice C. Greenbaum and Frank M. Parker Trustees of the Sandburg Family Trust: “Breathing Tokens,” “Bumble Bee Days,” “Chinese Letters or Korean,” “Evidence As to a She Devil,” “From an Illinois Prairie Hut,” “Good Babies Make Good Poems,” “Journey and Oath,” “Mn Blake’s Chariots,” “Mn Lincoln and His Gloves,” “Nearer Than Any Mother’s Heart Wishes,” “Sojourner Truth Speaking,” “To a Poet,” and “You and a Sickle Moon.”

Chicago Poems, copyright 1916 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright renewed 1944 by Carl Sandburg: “Anna Imroth,” “Blacklisted,” ‘“Boes,” “Buttons,” “Chicago,” “Child of the Romans,” “Dynamiter,” “Fish Crier,” “Flux,” “Fog,” “Gone,” “Government,” “Graceland,” “Halsted Street Car,” “Harrison Street Court,” “I am the People, the Mob,” “In a Back Alley,” “Jan Kubelik,” “June,” “Killers,” “Letters to Dead Imagists,” “Lost,” “Mag,” “Mamie,” “Margaret,” “Mill-Doors,” “Muckers,” “Murmurings in a Field Hospital,” “Nigger,” “Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard,” “Old Woman,” “Onion Days,” “Poems Done on a Late Night Car,” “Poppies,” “Ready to Kill,” “The Road and the End,” “Salvage,” “Sketch,” “Skyscraper,” “Soiled Dove,” “Style,” “Trafficker,” “Wars,” “White Shoulders,” “Window,” and “Working Girls.”

The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, copyright © 1969, 1970 by Lilian Steichen Sandburg, Trustee: “The Abracadabra Boys,” “The Hammer” “The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany,” “The Man with the Broken Fingers,” “Mr. Longfellow and His Boy,” “Moonlight and Maggots,” “Open Letter to the Poet Archibald MacLeish . . . ,” and “Our Hells.”

Cornhuskers, copyright 1918 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright renewed 1946 by Carl Sandburg: “Bilbea,” “Cartoon,” “Chicago Poet,” “Cool Tombs,” “Fire Logs,” “The Four Brothers,” “Grass,” “Horses and Men in Rain,” “House,” “Illinois Farmer,” “Knucks,” “Memoir of a Proud Boy,” “A Million Young Workmen, 1915,” “Old Osawatomie,” “Old Timers,” “Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs,” “Prairie,” “Prairie Waters by Night,” “Southern Pacific,” “Sunset from Omaha Hotel Window,” “Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn,” “Washerwoman,” and “Wilderness.”