Carl Sandburg has been around a long time. In that period, during which modern art has celebrated some of its greatest triumphs, he has accumulated a mass of poems which have now been published as a single volume [Complete Poems]….
Search as we will among them we must say at once that technically the poems reveal no initiative whatever other than their formlessness; there is no motivating spirit held in the front of the mind to control them. And without a theory, as Pasteur once said, to unify it, a man's life becomes little more than an aimless series of random and repetitious gestures. In the poem a rebellion against older forms means nothing unless, finally, we have a new form to substitute for that which has become empty from the exhaustion of its means. There never has been any positive value in the form or lack of form known as free verse into which Sandburg's verse is cast.
This is a free excerpt of 158 words. There are 1,340 words (approx.
4 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Sandburg, Carl 1878–1967: Critical Essay by William Carlos Williams Access Pass.
