Sandburg, Carl - Gay Wilson Allen (essay date 1972)

Gay Wilson Allen (essay date 1972)

SOURCE: Allen, Gay Wilson. “Carl Sandburg.” In Carl Sandburg, pp. 5-48. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972.

[In the following essay, Wilson details Sandburg's life and literary career, citing significant developments in his later poetry.]

Carl Sandburg never won the Nobel Prize, but some Americans thought that he should have, and when Hemingway received it in 1954 he told reporters that it should have gone to Sandburg. Later in the year at the National Book Awards program in New York when Harvey Breit, of the New York Times Book Review staff, asked Sandburg how he felt about Hemingway's friendly gesture, he replied: “Harvey Breit, I want to tell you that sometime thirty years from now when the Breit boys are sitting around, one boy will say, ‘Did Carl Sandburg ever win the Nobel Prize?’ and one Breit boy will say, ‘Ernest Hemingway gave it to him in 1954.’”

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