Honey and Salt was published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1963, when Sandburg was eighty-five (he would die in 1967). It is his last collection of new poems and, despite its slightness compared to the early volumes, contains work of genuine distinction — particularly the love poems and the meditations on age.
The title suggests the collection’s range: honey (sweetness, domesticity, the pleasures of late life) and salt (tears, the sea, preservation against decay, the taste of experience). Sandburg had mellowed — the socialist anger of Chicago Poems is absent, replaced by an elder’s acceptance. But the rhythmic gift remains: “There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird… and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra Crags of what I want.”
The collection received respectful rather than enthusiastic reviews — by 1963, the New Critics and the Beats had both passed Sandburg by, and his democratic free verse seemed old-fashioned beside Ginsberg’s howl or Lowell’s confessionalism. But for readers who valued clarity, musicality, and the direct address of common experience, Sandburg’s final poems offered a kind of wisdom unavailable elsewhere.
Collecting Honey and Salt
First edition (Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1963): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $20–$50
- Signed: $80–$200