Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, and journalist who lived from 1878 to 1967. He is associated with the Chicago literary renaissance and wrote primarily in free verse. His poems often use Midwestern vernacular and imagery drawn from industry, agriculture, and urban life. His poetry frequently focuses on common people, including workers, immigrants, and the poor. His early collections, such as "Chicago Poems" (1916) and "Cornhuskers" (1918), established his reputation for direct, colloquial language. Later collections like "Smoke and Steel" (1920) and "The People, Yes" (1936) continued his treatment of democratic themes and folk speech. Sandburg also wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln in two parts, "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926) and "Abraham Lincoln: The War Years" (1939); the latter received a Pulitzer Prize. He published "The American Songbag" (1927), a collection of American folk songs, and wrote children's stories such as the "Rootabaga" tales. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1951 for "Complete Poems." Sandburg is a central figure in twentieth-century American poetry, known for bringing vernacular speech into the literary mainstream.