Primarily free verse. Some critics noted that the illusion of poetry in his works was based more on the arrangement of the lines than on the lines themselves.

His success as a poet was limited to that of a follower of Whitman and of the Imagists. In Carl Sandburg, Karl Detzer says that in 1918 "admirers proclaimed him a latter-day Walt Whitman; objectors cried that their six-year-old daughters could write better poetry." 

Poet, writer, folklorist; born in Galesburg, Illinois  He studied at Lombard College, Galesburg (1898--1902) - with time out for service in the Spanish-American War (1899) - and in the decades ahead would work as an editor, journalist, copywriter, lecturer, and collector of folk songs.  He was an organizer of the Social-Democratic Party (1908), and was secretary to the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee (1910--12).  Known for such famous poems as "Chicago" (1914), and "Fog" (1916), he won the Pulitzer Prize (1940) for the last of his six-volume biography of Lincoln (1926--39).  He was ahead of most of his fellow poets in his interest in American folksong and lore; he coll