Carl Sandburg

Biography

Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) was the author of eleven books of poetry, including Chicago Poems (Henry Holt, 1916) and Honey and Salt (Harcourt, Brace, 1963), as well as six books of nonfiction, including The American Songbag (Harcourt, Brace, 1927). He received two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (Harcourt, Brace, 1939) and the second for his Complete Poems (Harcourt, Brace, 1950).

See Work

POETRY / Autumn 1928

Moon-Path

By Carl Sandburg

Creep up, moon, on the south Sky.
Mark the moon path of this evening.
The day must be counted.
The new moon is a law.
The little say-so of the moon must be listened to.

POETRY / Autumn 1928

Landscape

By Carl Sandburg

See the trees lean to the wind’s way of learning.
See the dirt of the hills shape to the water’s way of learning.
See the lift of it go the way the biggest
wind and the strongest water want it.

POETRY / Summer 1928

Flowers Tell Months

By Carl Sandburg

Gold buttons in the garden today—
Among the brown-eyed susans the golden spiders are gambling.
The blue sisters of the white asters speak to each other.

POETRY / Summer 1928

Blossom Themes

By Carl Sandburg

Late in the winter came one day
When there was a whiff on the wind,
a suspicion, a cry not to be heard

POETRY / Summer 1928

Nocturn Cabbage

By Carl Sandburg

Cabbages catch at the moon.
It is late summer, no rain, the pack of the soil
cracks open, it is a hard summer.
In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the
leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are
series of little silver waterfalls...

POETRY / Summer 1928

Broken Sky

By Carl Sandburg

The sky of gray is eaten in six places,
Rag holes stand out.
It is an army blanket and the sleeper
slept too near the fire.

POETRY / Summer 1928

Silver Point

By Carl Sandburg

The silver point of an evening star
dropping toward the hammock of new moon
over Lake Okoboji, over prairie waters in Iowa—
it was framed in the lights just after twilight.