He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life", and at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."

During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature". He received three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Sandburg himself was perhaps the first American urban folk singer, accompanying himself on solo guitar at lectures and poetry recitals, and in recordings, long before the first or the second folk revival movements (of the 1940s and 1960s. Sandburg's 1927 anthology, the American Songbag, enjoyed enormous popularity, going through many editions.

During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature".

And why not one of his poems: one of my favorites, I believe in was in a reader from my former teaching career:

The Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.