I can’t separate the book from the book, the content from its form. To say, “The Collected Works of Carl Sandberg” is an abstraction. But my “Carl Sandberg” was the first book I ever bought for myself, a fat, gray, hardbound volume with a red square. It had lost its cover who knows how many decades ago. A junior high friend turned me on to the long poem “The People, Yes,” and I had to have it. I made a pilgrimage to Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard at McCadden — the jewel of what once was Booksellers’ Row — where I plunked down my hard-saved birthday and allowance money and took that book away with me. That volume has accompanied me through every move, and when I gaze across the room, it’s like Sandberg himself keeping me company, faithfully, all these years.
Source: latimes.com – Los Angeles Times