The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Hardcover)

by Carl Sandburg (Author) "Hog Butcher for the World,..." (more)
Key Phrases: kling klong, honorable orators, hush song, New York, United States, Pennsylvania Avenue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The definitive edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection. "A marvelous prosody, a perfect ear for the beautiful potentials of common speech, something he learned from folk song, but mostly he learned from just listening" (Kenneth Rexroth).


About the Author
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), the son of Swedish immigrant parents, was born in Galesburg, Illinois. Until he was thirty-six he was virtually unknown to the literary world, but in 1914 a group of his poems appeared in Poetry magazine, and the following year, with the publication of Chicago Poems, he embarked on a literary career that brought him international fame as a poet, novelist, biographer, historian, journalist, and musician.

The author of more than forty books, Sandburg twice won the Pulitzer Prize: for history, with his four-volume Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, and for poetry, with Complete Poems. Among the many literary awards he received were the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal, the Poetry Society of America's gold medal, and the Boston Arts Festival Award.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 832 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151009961
• ISBN-13: 978-0151009961
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #370,150 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-deserving of a Pulitzer Prize!, May 24, 2001

By	ROGER L. FOREMAN (Bath, Maine) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and Expanded Edition (Hardcover)

A magnificent collections by one of the most diverse and gifted minds in American literary history. As a high school English teacher, I often teach the "dark" Sandburg: "Killers," "Grass," "Iron," and other pessimistic works by Sandburg. This volume takes that pessimism and puts it into a much more realistic context, dealing with World War I, the Great Depression, and an era of American History to which few of us today can relate. Sandburg's poetry is virtually prose in sections, reading very fluidly. It is fascinating to watch his evolution as a writer and as a man throughout the poems he wrote. I rarely sit and just read poetry, but I recommend this volume to my students--and to anyone else reading/listening--for a couple of hours when a novel just doesn't seem right. Some of it is dark, depressing, and mildly disturbing, but he sheds a ray of light often enough to keep one reading. There's something in Sandburg's work for everyone!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great compilation of great poetry, March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and Expanded Edition (Hardcover)

I started looking into Sandburg for a school project, but then i was hooked. I had to take this book from the library countless times, because i couldnt get enough of it. You are able to see many sides of Sandbug, and are able to get a hold of what his views are. Overall, it is on of the best books of poetry by any author. Those from the Midwest can really appreciate his descriptions of the region.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry Of A Fierce But Gentle Soul, September 20, 2005

By	Penny Dreadful (Under Your Skin) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Fifty years ago Carl Sandburg's poetry could be found in nearly every library, classroom and (in some form) home in America, but in the hurried twenty-first century, where too much bad poetry has spoiled whole living generations on the art, he is all-but lost to our social consciousness. This poet of freedom (even his poems disobey every respected rule of form) penned verses that celebrated the American spirit as no other writer had since Walt Whitman. If presented with a sampling of his most famous lines, the average American would probably light up and say, "Oh, yeah! Okay, I've heard that one." Reading the collected works of this Midwesterner is full of such moments of re-discovery. All of Sandburg's published books are here, putting his many hundreds of poems on display. His finest work, the controversial, slow-moving, stream of consciousness piece "The People, Yes" alone makes this anthology a gift to modern readers, but many other unexpected gems await to delight, challenge, inform, or taunt with sheer irony. Though some of these poems date back nearly a century, at no time does Sandburg ever sound anything but cutting-edge and post-modern. He is one of the greats for all ages of man.