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
The sea is always the same: and yet the sea always changes.
You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.
I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.
The simple dignity of a child drinking a bowl of milk embodies the fascination of an ancient rite.
Tell me if the lovers are losers... tell me if any get more than the lovers.
Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos, sob on the long cool winding saxophones. Go to it, O jazzmen.
I am the people the mob the crowd the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
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.
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.