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
Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.
I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter.
Didn't you tie the mittens on her feet (Wednesday Evening's) extra special nice? Yes--she is an extra special nice pigeon. She cries for pity when she wants pity. And she shuts her eyes when she doesn't want to look at you. And if you look deep in her eyes when her eyes are open you will see lights there exactly like the lights on the pastures and the meadows when the mist is drifting on a Wednesday evening just between the twilight and gloaming.
In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.
To those who had ordered them to death one of them said: 'We die because the people are asleep... you will die because the people will awaken'.
I am! I have come through! I belong!
Such a Big miracle in such a tiny baby. Big things often have small beginnings A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
I am an idealist. I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs.
What if someone gave a war & Nobody came? / Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.
There is no song to your singing.
What else have I done nearly all my life than go hungry and go on singing?
Time says hush: by the gong of time you live. Listen and you hear time saying you were silent long before you came to life and you will again be silent long after you leave it, why not be a little silent now? Hush yourself, noisy little man. Time hushes all: the gong of time rang for you to come out of the hush and you were born. The gong of time will ring for you to go back to the same hush you came from. Winners and losers, the weak and the strong, those who say little and try to say it well, and those who babble and prattle their lives away, time hushes all.
Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.