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Carl Sandburg

Flat Rock, Henderson County, North Carolina

Marker Inscription

Carl Sandburg 1878 1967. "Poet of the People," Lincoln biographer, & Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Lived, 1945-67, at "Connemara," 1/3 mi. W.

Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

The Story

Carl Sandburg, the celebrated "Poet of the People," spent the last two decades of his life, from 1945 to 1967, at Connemara, a farm just west of this marker. There he wrote and kept goats while cementing a reputation built on his poetry, his Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Abraham Lincoln, and his championing of ordinary Americans. His home is now preserved as a national historic site.

Why it matters

Sandburg gave democratic, working-class America a lyrical voice, and his mountain home became a shrine to one of the nation's most beloved men of letters.

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