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Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems

by David Nagler & Friends

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1.
Chicago 06:02
HOG Butcher for the World, 
 Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, 
 Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; 
 Stormy, husky, brawling, 
 City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I 
 have seen your painted women under the gas lamps 
 luring the farm boys.
 And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it 
 is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to 
 kill again.
 And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the 
 faces of women and children I have seen the marks 
 of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who 
 sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer 
 and say to them:
 Come and show me another city with lifted head singing 
 so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
 Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on 
 job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the 
 little soft cities; Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning 
 as a savage pitted against the wilderness, 
 Bareheaded, 
 Shoveling, 
 Wrecking, 
 Planning, 
 Building, breaking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with 
 white teeth,
 Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young 
 man laughs, Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has 
 never lost a battle, Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. 
 and under his ribs the heart of the people, 
 Laughing! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of 
 Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog 
 Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with 
 Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
2.
Lost 01:32
DESOLATE and lone
 All night long on the lake
 Where fog trails and mist creeps,
 The whistle of a boat
 Calls and cries unendingly,
 Like some lost child
 In tears and trouble
 Hunting the harbor's breast
 And the harbor's eyes.
3.
I ASKED professors who teach the meaning of life to tell 
 me what is happiness.
 And I went to famous executives who boss the work of 
 thousands of men.
 They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though 
 I was trying to fool with them
 And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along 
 the Desplaines river
 And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with 
 their women and children and a keg of beer and an 
 accordion.
4.
Mag 03:09
I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag.
 I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
 I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
 For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
 And told him we would love each other and take care of 
 each other
 Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
 Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
 And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away 
 dead broke. 
 I wish the kids had never come 
 And rent and coal and clothes to pay for 
 And a grocery man calling for cash, 
 Every day cash for beans and prunes. 
 I wish to God I never saw you, Mag. 
 I wish to God the kids had never come.
5.
YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.
 You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only 
 one thumb.
 You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and 
 win all the world's honors, but when you come back 
 home the print of the one thumb your mother gave 
 you is the same print of thumb you had in the old 
 home when your mother kissed you and said good-by.
 Out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men
 and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one anothers' 
 throats for room to stand and among them all 
 are not two thumbs alike.
 Somewhere is a Great God of Thumbs who can tell the 
 inside story of this.
6.
Fog 03:39
THE fog comes
 on little cat feet. It sits looking
 over harbor and city
 on silent haunches
 and then moves on.
7.
Killers 06:49
I AM singing to you
 Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
 Hard as a man in handcuffs,
 Held where he cannot move: Under the sun
 Are sixteen million men,
 Chosen for shining teeth,
 Sharp eyes, hard legs,
 And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs on the green grass;
 And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
 And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing 
 and killing. I never forget them day or night:
 They beat on my head for memory of them;
 They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
 To their homes and women, dreams and games. I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
 And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines--
 Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
 Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
 Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
 Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of 
 killing.
 Sixteen million men.
8.
Limited 02:24
I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains 
 of the nation.
 Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air 
 go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
 (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men 
 and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall 
 pass to ashes.)
 I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he 
 answers: "Omaha."
9.
WHILE the hum and the hurry
 Of passing footfalls
 Beat in my ear like the restless surf
 Of a wind-blown sea,
 A soul came to me
 Out of the look on a face. Eyes like a lake
 Where a storm-wind roams
 Caught me from under
 The rim of a hat. 
 I thought of a midsea wreck 
 and bruised fingers clinging 
 to a broken state-room door.
10.
THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
 Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. 
 A train whirls by, and men and women at tables 
 Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, 
 Eat steaks running with brown gravy, 
 Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee.
 The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,
 Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,
 And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work
 Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils
 Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases
 Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.
11.
UNDER the harvest moon,
 When the soft silver
 Drips shimmering
 Over the garden nights,
 Death, the gray mocker,
 Comes and whispers to you
 As a beautiful friend
 Who remembers. Under the summer roses
 When the flagrant crimson
 Lurks in the dusk
 Of the wild red leaves,
 Love, with little hands,
 Comes and touches you
 With a thousand memories,
 And asks you
 Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
12.
STUFF of the moon
 Runs on the lapping sand
 Out to the longest shadows.
 Under the curving willows,
 And round the creep of the wave line,
 Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
 Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.
13.
I SPOT the hills
 With yellow balls in autumn.
 I light the prairie cornfields
 Orange and tawny gold clusters
 And I am called pumpkins.
 On the last of October
 When dusk is fallen
 Children join hands
 And circle round me
 Singing ghost songs
 And love to the harvest moon;
 I am a jack-o'-lantern
 With terrible teeth
 And the children know
 I am fooling.
14.
THE young child, Christ, is straight and wise
 And asks questions of the old men, questions
 Found under running water for all children
 And found under shadows thrown on still waters
 By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.
 Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
 Singing a low song in the loneliness.
 And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
 And the old men answer nothing and only know love
 For the young child. Christ, straight and wise.
15.
Gone 04:39
EVERYBODY loved Chick Lorimer in our town. 
 Far off 
 Everybody loved her.
 So we all love a wild girl keeping a hold
 On a dream she wants.
 Nobody knows now where Chick Lorimer went.
 Nobody knows why she packed her trunk . . . a few 
 old things
 And is gone, 
 Gone with her little chin 
 Thrust ahead of her 
 And her soft hair blowing careless 
 From under a wide hat,
 Dancer, singer, a laughing passionate lover. Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick? Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts? 
 Everybody loved Chick Lorimer. 
 Nobody knows where she's gone.
16.
I AM a copper wire slung in the air, Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow. Night and day I keep singing--humming and thrumming: It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want, Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech, In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying, A copper wire.

credits

released October 14, 2016

Players:
Jason Adasiewicz: vibraphone
Jean Cook: violin
Therese Cox: accordion
Robbie Fulks: acoustic guitar on “Under the Harvest Moon”
Andrew Hall: upright bass
Clara Kennedy: cello
Dana Lyn: violin
David Nagler: piano, nylon string guitar, celesta, celestaphone, Farfisa
Jon Natchez: clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, trombone
Jessica Pavone: viola
Kelly Pratt: trumpet, French horn, trombone, flugelhorn, euphonium
Mike Pride: drums & percussion
Dan Scivoletti: oboe on “Mag”

Singers:
“Happiness” - Sally Timms
“Under a Hat Rim” - Jon Langford
“Child of the Romans” - Daniel Knox
“Under the Harvest Moon” - Robbie Fulks
“Theme in Yellow” - Jeff Tweedy
“Child” - The Cornhuskers: Gerald Dowd, James Elkington, Kelly Hogan, Chris Mills, Nora O’Connor, Deanna Varagona

All other lead vocals by David Nagler

“Chicago” - Duet vocal by Kelly Hogan; “The Mob”: Jean Cook, Therese Cox, Gerald Dowd, Robbie Fulks, Kelly Hogan, Clara Kennedy, Daniel Knox, Jon Langford, Jessica Pavone
“Gone” - Background vocals by Jean Cook, Clara Kennedy, Nora O’Connor, Jessica Pavone, Deanna Varagona
“Under a Telephone Pole” - Harmony vocals by Max Avery Lichtenstein

Recorded in 2015 at:

The Magic Shop, New York, NY, June 15-17, July 12-13. Engineered by Ted Young.
KingSize Studios, Chicago, IL, August 4. Engineered by John Abbey.
The Loft, Chicago, IL, August 10-11, January 5, 2016. Engineered by Mark Greenberg.
Reliable Recorders, Chicago, IL, August 12 & 26. Engineered by Alex Hall.
Outer Space, Brooklyn, NY, September 2. Engineered by Ted Young.
Tin Drum Recording, Cos Cob, CT, September 15, 17 & October 11. Engineered by Max Avery Lichtenstein.
Orange Road Recording, Montclair, NJ, October 1. Engineered by Ray Ketchem.
Additional editing by Justin Hillman, Northampton, MA, October 24.

Mixed by Daniel James Goodwin at The Isokon, Woodstock, NY, October 24-28, 2015. “Under the Harvest Moon” mixed by John Abbey at KingSize Studios, August 11, 2015.

All lyrics by Carl Sandburg.

All music by David Nagler except “Personality,” “Killers,” and “Limited,” music by David Nagler and Jon Natchez.

Produced by David Nagler and Max Avery Lichtenstein. Arranged by David Nagler with Jon Natchez, except “Under the Harvest Moon,” arranged by Robbie Fulks.

Mastered by Nathan James at Vault Mastering Studios, Phoenix, Arizona.

Design by Sheila Sachs. Photography by John Atwood and Barry Phipps.

(c) 2016 David Nagler (p) 2016 Big Sleep Records

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David Nagler New York

David Nagler is a Brooklyn-based musician and songwriter. His groups include As For the Future, Tape Hiss, and Nova Social, and he is the musical director for Wesley Stace’s Cabinet of Wonders.

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