Carl sandburg poetry style
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Much of Sandburg’s most powerful imagery is a revelation of the transformation of the Midwest from a rural culture and agricultural-based economy into the industrialized centerpiece of the country. Instead of bucolic scenes of slow-moving life in small, his poetry bustles with the energy of skyscrapers, chorus girls, and corrupt mayors. Instead of detailing the slow, simple lives of farmers, Sandburg’s verse moves at the rhythmic pace of jazz through the urban streets of the big city. In his verse, the innocent farm girl dressed in gingham who has landed in the Emerald City has traded the hopelessness of becoming her old-before-her-time mother for the dreams of financial independence or seeing her name in lights.
Sandburg grew up in a home where Swedish was the first language and English was used when necessary. As a result, his poetry inom
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A Workingman's Poet
He was born on January 6, 1878, the son of parents who had come from Sweden. Carl’s father, a manual laborer, discouraged his son’s interest in book learning, but his mother sensed Sandburg’s possibilities and cheered his education. Sandburg’s origins in an immigrant household where both Swedish and English were used was a formative influence on his poetry, says biographer Penelope Niven in The Day Carl Sandburg Died. “I think there’s something very rich in his use of language that is probably informed by the mix of those two languages.”
After dropping out of school in the eighth grade, Sandburg worked a series of odd jobs, his résumé reading like an exercise in free association over the next few years.
“While harboring some vague thoughts about becoming a journalist one day, my grandfather tried out several trades that were familiar to everyone in Galesburg,” Sandburg’s granddaughter, Paula Steichen, noted in a published remembrance. “He had a short bo
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Carl Sandburg: Journalism and Poetry
The headquarters of the Chicago Daily News.
Canal Street, Folder 1168A, Sheet 5. Chicago Architectural Photographing Company, creator. 1970. University of Illinois Chicago.
After Milwaukee, Sandburg and his family (which now included himself, Lillian, and the first of their three children, Margaret) moved to Chicago in 1913; he continued to work in journalism, although it was not always easy. Newspaper strikes and staffing changes made Sandburg move from paper to paper, but when he finally landed a job at the Chicago Daily News, he stayed there for the next fifteen years. During this time, he also began working on poetry when he had spare moments. In both his poetry and his journalistic writing, Sandburg paid attention to the lives of everyday people. Sandburg was a staunch supporter of civil rights, which is not a surprise, given his life experiences. One of Sandburg’s biographers wrote that “He grew up in a househ