Who Am I?

by CARL SANDBURG (1878-1967)

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things
   I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.

I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man
   at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most
   elusive captive in the universe.

American poet, Carl Sandburg won two Pulitzer prizes for his poetry and a third for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was a central figure in the “Chicago Renaissance.” He was a supporter of civil rights and was honored by the NAACP with a Silver Plaque award. When he passed away in 1967, then President Lyndon B. Johnson said he was “more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.”[5]

Carl Sandburg Contemporaries
Robert Frost
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Alfred Noyes