Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburgwas an American poet, writer, and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, and Smoke and Steel. He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life",...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth6 January 1878
CountryUnited States of America
There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wantedthey come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.
Rest is not a word of free people. Rest is a monarchical word.
The more rhymethere isin poetry the more dangerof its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning.
Alike and ever alike, we are on all continents in the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games, dancing, fun. From tropics to arctics humanity live with these needs so alike, so inexorably alike.
I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.
Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, cross-lights, and moon wisps.
Be careful with your words, once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten.
An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, "Come and find me, come and find me."
Come on, you Do you want to live forever?
The wind bit hard at Valley Forge one Christmas. Soldiers tied rags on their feet. Red footprints wrote on the snow . . .
The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time
Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone.
A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people.