In Honey and Salt over two hundred eighty-five color references occur, either by overt naming or by suggestion (in sixty-five pages of the Complete Poems)….

[Sandburg] had a vivid sense of color which he relied on all his life. His first book, Chicago Poems (1916), although not quite so "colorful" as Honey and Salt, nevertheless made use of hue and shade over two hundred fifty times. In this first book reds are prominent, for there is a great deal of brawling and heartiness as well as a sense of social injustice here (red being a color of violence)….

Forty-seven years later, his life drawing to a close, Sandburg is still painting his images in varied and brilliant, often dazzling colors. (p. 94)

The first poem of Chicago Poems records details of a brawny metropolis; the last poem in Honey and Salt, over seven hundred fifty pages later, celebrates the evolutionary...