"Humdrum" by Carl Sandburg

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 12, 2018   Humdrum   Carl Sandburg

If I had a million lives to live    and a million deaths to die    in a million humdrum worlds, I'd like to change my name    and have a new house number to go by    each and every time I died    and started life all over again. I wouldn't want the same name every time    and the same old house number always,    dying a million deaths,    dying one by one a million times:    —would you?                         or you?                                 or you?                This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   "Humdrum" was published in Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (N. L. Brown, 1920).   Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. His books include Chicago Poems (Henry Holt, 1916) and In Reckless Ecstasy (Asgard Press, 1904), among others. He died on July 22, 1967.   Photo credit: Elizabeth Buehrmann Poetry by Sandburg   Selected Poems (Mariner Books, 1996) "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz "This Day" by Jimmy Santiago Baca "Imaginary Conversation" by Linda Pastan August Guest Editor: Evie Shockley   Thanks to Evie Shockley, author of semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shockley​ and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038