In these seventy-seven poems, Carl Sandburg eloquently celebrates the themes that enraged him as a poet for more than half a century--life, love, and death. Strongly lyrical, embracing life with warmth and affection, these luminous, intensely honest poems testify to man's courage, frailty, and tenderness and to the enduring wonders of nature. They ask questions whose answers lie locked in the human heart and reveal once again why, although he won international eminence as a biographer, historian, novelist, and journalist, Carl Sandburg is, first and foremost, America's favorite poet. This collection features such poems as: "Wingtip" - "Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely" - "Almanac" - "Biography" - "Fog" - "Arithmetic" "A magnificent tribute to the rich and enduring vitality of a poetic genius whose creative power has in no way lessened with the passing years. Those qualities of 'steel and velvet,' or rock-hardness and drifting-fog-softness, which this poet once attributed to Abraham Lincoln, are so perfectly blended in these poems that the reader is captivated by their alternate strength and tenderness, their pure lyricism and granite wisdom, their measure of honey and salt." -Chicago Tribune "A magnificent tribute to the rich and enduring vitality of a poetic genius whose creative power has in no way lessened with the passing years. Those qualities of 'steel and velvet,' or rock-hardness and drifting-fog-softness, which this poet once attributed to Abraham Lincoln, are so perfectly blended in these poems that the reader is captivated by their alternate strength and tenderness, their pure lyricism and granite wisdom, their measure of honey and salt." - Chicago Tribune "Carl Sandburg's poetic voice is as vibrant as ever...reflecting a warm, youthful appreciation of life, a sharp lively wit and a tender approach to the human condition." - Philadelphia Inquirer "There are long poems and four-liners, some sad, a few tart, almost all imagistic in technique, didactic in temper and affirmative in spirit. Generally, more private than public, the poems in one muted shape or another, still embody the American credo, a Lincolnesque humanism." - Kirkus Reviews CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967) was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, first in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln and again in 1951 for Complete Poems. Before becoming known as a poet, he worked as a milkman, an ice harvester, a dishwasher, a salesman, a fireman, and a journalist. Among his classics are the Rootabaga Stories, which he wrote for his young daughters at the beginning of his long and distinguished literary career. Honey and Salt By Carl Sandburg Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1963 Carl Sandburg All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-642165-2 Contents Title Page, Table of Contents, Copyright, Honey and Salt, Pass, Friend, Alone and Not Alone, Wingtip, Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely, Almanac, Biography, Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians, Dreaming Fool, Lief the Lucky, Bird Footprint, Cahokia, Buyers and Sellers, City Number, Chromo, The Evening Sunsets Witness and Pass On, Deep Sea Wandering, Call the Next Witness, Early Copper, Atlas, How Have You Been?, Cheap Rent, Elm Buds, Child Face, Fog Numbers, Evening Questions, Fifty-Fifty, Evening Sea Wind, Forgotten Wars, God Is No Gentleman, Hunger and Cold, Foxgloves, Harvest, Fame If Not Fortune, Impasse, Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?, Keepsake Boxes, Impossible Iambics, Lackawanna Twilight, If So Hap May Be, Kisses, Can You Come Back Like Ghosts?, Lake Michigan Morning, New Weather, Lesson, Metamorphosis, Love Beyond Keeping, Moods, Moon Rondeau, Little Word, Little White Bird, Offering and Rebuff, Morning Glory Blue, High Moments, Mummy, Old Hokusai Print, One Parting, Ever a Seeker, Old Music for Quiet Hearts, Personalia, The Gong of Time, Prairie Woodland, Shadows Fall Blue on the Mountains, Quotations, Skyscrapers Stand Proud, Pool of Bethesda, First Sonata for Karlen Paula, Thou Art Like a Flower, Solo for Saturday Night Guitar, Rose Bawn, Speech, Runaway Colors, Out of the Rainbow End, Sun Dancer, Themes in Contrast, Two Fish, Smoke Shapes, Three Shrines, Variations on a Theme, Timesweep, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 Honey and Salt A bag of tricks — is it?   And a game smoothies play? If you're good with a deck of cards or rolling the bones — that helps? If you can tell jokes and be a chum and make an impression — that helps? When boy meets girl or girl meets boy —   what helps? They all help: be cozy but not too cozy: be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so: then forget everything you ever heard about love for it's a summer tan and a winter windburn and it comes as weather comes and you can't change it: it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands — and not