SANDBURG, CARL. Smoke and steel. *$2 Harcourt 811
20–17899
The sections of this new book of poems are called Smoke nights, People who must, Broken-face gargoyles, Playthings of the wind, Mist forms, Accomplished facts, Passports, Circles of doors, Haze, Panels. Some of the poems are reprinted from Poetry, the New Republic, Liberator, and other periodicals.
+ Booklist 17:63 N ’20
“‘Smoke and steel’ is both an epic of modern industrialism and a mighty pæan to modern beauty.” L: Untermeyer
+ Bookm 52:362 Ja ’21 360w
“Mr Sandburg has no sense of the past, no vision of the future, and so his reality is a little huddled bunch of dried-up aspects out of which have escaped the aspects of life about which he is so passionately concerned. This is a great pity, because I believe there is no poet in the country who has by nature the qualities of spirit which, if fused and blended in the proper alembic, would not make some of the loveliest and most convincing poems of our day.” W: S. Braithwaite
* + -|Boston Transcript p7 O 16 ’20 2050w
“Sandburg has lost (at least temporarily) the one and only thing which makes him great—the ability to determine when he has written something good. He now apparently believes that everything he writes is a poem. He imitates Gary, and turns his product out on a quantity basis.” Arthur Wilson