Carl Sandburg visited Colorado Springs, CO in 1929 with an interdisciplinary program that held the audience spellbound with his readings from his biography of Abraham Lincoln, poems from his Slabs of the Sunburnt West, and western folk tunes.
But Sandburg was in Colorado Springs earlier on his infamous hobo trip in 1897 when he was nineteen – he went from Galesburg, Illinois to Pikes Peak, Colorado. When he saw the Rockies, he exclaimed “There’s the hand of God.” Along the way while bedding down in hobos camps, he learned from his fellow travelers the songs and ballads they sang and their travel stories and that he gathered them together in The American Songbag, 1927. Songs such as these relived the American West ~ Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Billy the Kid, The Gallows Song, This Land Is Your Land. And his poetry envisions a mystical landscape. “The Rocky Mountains are tacked tall on the skyline. – Sunrise and dawns wash on the skyline every morning. – Sunset features of foam float red and fade pink.”~ Carl Sandburg, Pike’s Peek.
Kate Benzel’s production 85 years after his 1929 visit revives Sandburg’s affection for the West – its poetry and songs. In the shadow of Pike’s Peak this production at Colorado College in Colorado Springs collaborated with Colorado talent – David Mason, Colorado Poet Laureate, and Sons and Brothers Trio, the premiere band from the front range.
