SOURCE: Phelps, William Lyon. “Sara Teasdale, Alan Seeger, and Others.” In The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century, pp. 277-311. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925.

In the following excerpt, Phelps finds Chicago Poems “overrated” but acknowledges that Sandburg is an original writer with the “true power of poetic interpretation.”

Carl Sandburg sings of Chicago with husky-haughty lips. I like Chicago and I like poetry; but I do not much care for the combination as illustrated in Mr. Sandburg's volume, Chicago Poems. I think it has been overrated. It is pretentious rather than important. It is the raw material of poetry, rather than the finished product. Mere passion and imagination are not enough to make a poet, even when accompanied by indignation. If feeling and appreciation could produce poetry, then we should all be poets. But it is also necessary to know how to write.

Carl...