Carl Sandburg: “Try Being a Goat,” Whimsy and Humor for Children and Grown-Ups
If I went on an imaginary journey and could only take five books, From Daybreak to Good Night, Poems for Children* by Carl Sandburg* would be one. I wouldn’t need my books of information. I would be living in the moment. I would take only what has constantly touched my heart through the years from repeated readings.
Carl Sandburg received three Pulitzer prizes during his long career as a poet and writer—two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. In Chicago Poems, he describes America in plain words with the strength of muscle, as in his poem entitled “Chicago”:
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:
As powerful and evocative as his words are in that collection, it was not with those poems that I found my bond with Carl Sandburg. That bond was forged through my discovery of his poems for children, and it comes from my own inner nature of playfulness.
Try Being a Goat
Try being a goat: put on a face of calm contemplations.
Look people in the eye as though unaware they gaze at you.
Read their innermost hidden secrets.
Then turn away toward other horizons chewing your cud.*
While there are clues of the importance of calm, the good manners of looking in the eyes of another when talking, and the helpfulness of being curious about what a friend thinks, it is the last line that I find most important with its thoughtful advice—be curious about who you are.
In her 2001 edition, artist Lynn Smith-Ary’* has created double-page illustrations with the feel of a child’s drawing—that fresh view of a young drawer. From inspiration, imagination, and knowledge of Carl Sandburg, Smith-Ary indicates a way for children to eagerly turn to the words that appear in a grassy farmyard with chickens and cows, and a boy and a girl watching farmer Sandburg as he gazes at a goat gazing back at him—while the cows, other goats, a chicken, and a flying bee watch too.
Carl Sandburg’s writings for children have been praised for their “inventiveness, whimsicality, and humor” with one reviewer adding that “Sandburg was writing for the children in himself … for the eternal child, who, when he or she hears language spoken, hears rhythm, not sense."* Yet, learning can and often does occur—quietly, at a deeper level.
My realization is, “Responding to children’s poetry or stories needs no explanation, only a ticket of willingness to enter.”
* Carl Sandburg, From Daybreak to Good Night, Poems for Children (Toronto, ON: Annick Press
Ltd., 2001).
* Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, writer, and editor. U.S. President Lyndon B.
Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28362
* Chicago Poems,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12840/chicago
* Sandburg, From Daybreak, 12–13.
* Lynn Smith-Ary, artist and animation film-maker of Montréal, Quebec, has received many film awards including a Genie for her short animation film entitled Pearl’s Diner. As a teenager, she wrote to Carl Sandburg and received a letter of encouragement in return. She attributes her inspiration to illustrate his collection of children’s poems years later to his kind response.
http://www.annickpress.com/author/Lynn_Smith_Ary