Anthologist Louis Untermeyer (1885 – 1977) exalts American poet Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) for the impassioned biography of Abraham Lincoln. Untermeyer, respected anthologist in the republic of letters, was a great admirer of the poet and goes to some length pointing out how Sandburg’s life experiences made him the ideal candidate to write the six volume biography:
“A great rhapsodize, like his predecessor Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg has freely ranged the country for the subject of his poetry. He has celebrated the native scene in practically all its phases, from windy shouting of the metropolis to the silence of the fog which moves over the city ‘on little cat feet; from violent jazz fantasies, in which the drums, traps, banjos, and horns cry ‘like the racing car slipping away from a motorcycle-cop’ to delicate and hushed nocturnes in a deserted brickyard.”
“The very fact that he is a poet, and a peculiarly American poet, has contributed incalculably to his ability to catch the spirit of the great Civil War President.”
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