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
I'll die propped up in bed trying to do a poem about America.
POETRY: A sliver of the moon lost in the belly of a golden frog.
I been a wanderin' Early and late, New York City To the Golden Gate An' it looks like I'm never gonna cease my Wanderin'.
I was up day and night with Lincoln for years. I couldn't have picked a better companion.
Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone.
Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
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.
The more rhymethere isin poetry the more dangerof its tricking the writer into something other than the urge in the beginning.
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.
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.
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?
You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.
Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.
Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly.