Carl Sandburg's "Little Word, Little White Bird"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem comes from Honey and Salt, the last collection Sandburg published before his death.

“Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg,” said a friend of the poet, “is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot.” His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg “the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music.” -Poetry Foundation

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is
0:05.7	Friday, January 12, 2024. Today's poem is one of my favorite 20th century poems by Carl Sandberg.
0:18.0	It's called Little Word, Little White Bird.
0:24.1	It's lengthy enough that I'll probably just read it once today.
0:29.4	It requires little in the way of commentary, except to say that it is an extended example of a poet really having fun with the act of writing poetry.
0:50.4	It is, on some level, a kind of reflection on that act, the way, especially that a poem, or a poet rather, develops or selects a metaphor.
1:02.6	But then it takes us maybe a level or two deeper by getting us to look at what's at stake when a poet selects a metaphor
1:16.6	and that there are not the strength of a metaphor isn't just in the eye of the beholder but that
1:25.8	there are good better and best metaphors,
1:31.5	especially for things as important as the subject of this poem.
1:37.7	Here is little word, little white bird.
1:44.5	Love.
1:46.1	Is it a cat with claws and wild mate screams in the black night?
1:52.6	Love.
1:53.9	Is it a bird, a goldfinch with a burnish on its wingtips or a little gray sparrow,
1:59.8	picking crumbs, hunting crumbs love is it a tug at the
2:06.3	heart that comes high and costs always costs as long as you have it love is it a free glad spender ready to spend to the limit, and then go head over heels
2:20.8	and debt?
2:22.3	Love, can it hit one without hitting two and leave the one lost and groping?
2:27.3	Love, can you pick it up like a mouse and put it in your pocket and take it to your room
2:33.3	and bring it out of your pocket and say,
2:35.8	oh, here is my love, my little pretty mousy love.
	...

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