Selected Poems

This collection gathers the work of Carl Sandburg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. It draws on all of his earlier volumes and adds four Lincoln poems that had never been published before. The selection reflects the wide range of his writing, a breadth that Archibald MacLeish had trusted in.

More than 150 poems are arranged in eleven sections, with themes running from Chicago and poems of protest to Lincoln, anti-war poems and Sandburg as a poet of the people. Together they show what Sandburg was made of and, through him, what the American people were made of. Among the poems included are "Chicago," "Grass," "Arithmetic," "A Father to His Son," "A Dream Girl" and "The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany."

Sandburg set out to write plain poems that would keep appealing to ordinary people, and he held to that connection throughout his life. The book is designed for general readers and for students. George and Willene Hendrick edited it and wrote the introduction, which looks at how Sandburg's life and beliefs shaped his poetry and why it still speaks to Americans today.