The age of the flower

the long version

This latest collection of personal and autobiographical poems by Helga Sandburg includes new works as well as many previously published. She brings to them a lifetime of rich and varied experiences - as the daughter of poet Carl Sandburg, as a poet and writer in her own right, as the wife and then widow of Dr. George "Barney" Crile, as mother, grandmother, musician and songwriter, lover of nature, travel, people, and words. And each personal glimpse carries with it a universal quality. Library Journal declared her first collection of poems, The Unicorns, "clear and crisp and filled with the vibrations of love, death and everyday existence." This new publication promises to continue that tradition of openness and depth of meaning. Sandburg quotes her father's review (1916) of Ezra Pound to explain her philosophy toward poetry: "People write poetry because they want to.... It is the dark stuff of life that comes and goes.". The first stanza of the title poem that begins the book is as follows:. Unjealous, you let me touch the flower, Crouched kissing as if I were its lover, Which I am, being in the power Of all small pink roses everywhere living. The collection ends with a quartet of poems about the death of Dr. Crile and Miss Sandburg's adjustments to widowhood.