SOURCE: Spiller, Robert E., et al. “The ‘New’ Poetry.” In Literary History of the United States: History, Third Edition, pp. 1171-96. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

In the following excerpt from a summary volume of U.S. literary history, the unsigned critic alleges that there is no significant stylistic development among Sandburg's collections of poetry but acknowledges that The People, Yes (1936) “is one of the great American books.”

… Of the many poets whose careers Poetry helped to shape, none went so far on his own road as Carl Sandburg. He believed always that the best hope of the people is to be found in the men with “free imaginations, bringing changes into a world resenting change.” Such a man he was himself, his ear laid to the heart of America. In his six volumes of poetry and in the six volumes of his great life of Lincoln (The Prairie Years...