SOURCE: Oktenberg, Adrian. “From the Bottom Up: Three Radicals of the Thirties.” In A Gift of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Marie Harris and Kathleen Aguero, pp. 83-111. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Oktenberg examines Sandburg's myth of “the People” and unfavorably compares the poet to Walt Whitman as an representative of America and democracy.

Carl Sandburg, Roughneck Singer

Carl Sandburg is almost unread today, when he is not a laughingstock, among those who still read poetry. The charges against him are severe, and of many of them his poetry stands convicted. Yet there are many other poets, poets who are read (or at least taught) and whose reputations are higher, who are equally guilty. During his lifetime, Sandburg's work was taken seriously by many whose business it is to take poetry seriously. And—what is not true of others...