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
Poetry is a shuffling of boxes of illusions buckled with a strap of facts.
The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather.
There is a music for lonely hearts nearly always. If the music dies down there is a silence. Almost the same as the movement of music. To know silence perfectly is to know music.
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard.
A liar goes in fine clothes, a liar goes in rags, a liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
Faith is indispensable, and the world at times does not seem to have quite enough of it. It can and has accomplished what seems to be the impossible. Wars have been started and men and nations lost for the lack of it. Faith starts from the individual and builds men and nations. America was built by and on the faith of our ancestors.
The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away.
The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over the harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
The fog comes on little cat feet.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work- I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg. And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years,and passengers ask the conductor- What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.
Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.