Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Tuesday, October 27th.

And today I'm going to read for you a poem by American poet Carl Sandberg, who lived from 1878 to 1967.

Carl Sandberg is an interesting guy. He was born into a poor family in Illinois, and he became a poet, a

biographer, and musician, a fiction writer, and a historian. He had a lifelong love and deep interest

in Abraham Lincoln. He was born shortly after Lincoln's death. He was born in

1878. And he lived through Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement. And he took an active

interest in politics. He was a political dissident, an organizer for the socialist Democratic Party. And he had a lifelong interest in the poor and the disenfranchised in America. Many, many of his poems address the issue of poverty and injustice. He was an advocate for people he felt were marginalized in

American society. And he was known in terms of his, the style of his poetry, he was known as

following in the footsteps of Walt Whitman. He did not write formalist poetry. Rarely did his

poetry have regular rhythm and rhyme. The one I'm going to read for you today is in free verse. And there's an interesting quote by his contemporary Carl Dutzer who said in 1918, quote, admirers proclaimed him a latter day Walt Whitman. Objectors cried that their six-year-old

daughters could write better poetry, end quote. So his poetry is very accessible. It's simple.

It uses very simple words. But it does indeed explore complex issues that kind of cut right to the

heart of these deep wounds and questions and controversies in American

life, which is why I chose to read one of his poems. And as we know, we are in a very politically

charged time in American history. The election is a week from today, which is why I chose to

read a political poem from a few generations ago that still has resonances today.

And Carl Sandberg was always unafraid to take on these controversies.

And so I'm proud to read a poem by him that tries to get into that.

The poem I'm going to read for you today is called the Long Shadow of Lincoln,

a litany.

And before I read it, I'm going to read an, before I read it, I'm going to read an excerpt from

a speech that Abraham Lincoln gave to Congress on December 1st, 1862.

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