Carl Sandburg was born on January 6th, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois. His was the son of August and Clara Sandburg. He died in his Flat Rock home in North Carolina on July 22, 1967. He lived to be 89 and it is so funny that he lived to be that exact age (Lisa Lee 1, 4). In his prologue to Complete Poems, he said “All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel, and the five years lacking a month I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker….It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine, as did [the Japanese poet] Hokusai, and speaking my farewell to earthly scenes, I might paraphrase: “If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.” It is such a coincidence that he wanted to live to be ei

Most critics had objectionable viewpoints towards Sandburg for his “lack of footnotes and to his poetic method of imagining Lincoln’s thoughts (http://door.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/sandburg.htm 1).” On the other hand, most literary critics “praised the work (http://door.library.uiuc.edu 1).” Someone who had also written about Lincoln, Mark Van Doren, said in The Nation: “It’s Sandburg the artist, epic poet, who has attacked this largest and most complicated of American subjects-the subject being, of course, not merely Lincoln himself, though Lincoln was complicated enough, but in addition the whirlpool of cultures out of which he was flung into fame (http://door.library.uiuc.edu 1).”

Sandburg was a very successful writer. Before he started to write his poetry, he was a journalist in Milwaukee and later moved to Chicago where he didn’t miss a beat with his journalism career. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for his four-volume sequel, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. He won another Pulitzer Prize in 1950 in poetry for his collection of poems called Complete Poems.

In conclusion, although there have been a numerous amount of writers, most of them are unable to live up to the magnitude of Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was the greatest writer of his time. He wrote hundreds of stories/poems and had the respect of the people. He helped establish a new writing style of the 20th century and he didn’t even know it. He started free prose which is what most poets use today. He won two Pulitzer Prizes and should have won more. He has changed poetry forever in just one lifetime.

Carl Sandburg wrote in a style, free prose, which was considered different by most.

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