Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg is a poet of working class America.  He had many jobs, including milk delivery boy, barber shop porter, fireman, truck operator, and apprentice house painter. He was a musician (guitarist and singer), a radio broadcaster, and writer. He wrote to glorify hard work, the striving and labor that our country was built on. 

His biographer, Richard Crowder notes, in Carl Sandburg, "he was the first poet of modern times to actually to use the language of the people as his almost total means of expression.... Sandburg had entered into the language of the people; he was not looking at it as a scientific phenomenon or a curiosity.... He was at home with it." Sandburg's own Whitmanesque comment was: "I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Did you know that all the work of the world is done through me?" Sandburg was quoted as saying, "I'll probably die propped up in bed trying to write a poem about America." Sandburg was read by the masses, as well as scholars. He is a people's poet.

Sandburg is also well-known as the singing bard—the "voice of America singing."It was fortunate that he was willing to travel about reciting and recording his poetry, for the interpretation his voice lent to his work was unforgettable. With its deep rich cadences, dramatic pauses, and midwestern dialect, his speech was "a kind of singing." Ben Hecht once wrote: "Whether he chatted at lunch or recited from the podium he had always the same voice. He spoke like a man slowly revealing something." For all this fame, he remained unassuming. What he wanted from life was "to be out of jail,... to eat regular,... to get what I write printed,... a little love at home and a little nice affection hither and yon over the American landscape,... [and] to sing every day."

(excerpts and quotes from poetryfoundation.org)

Sandburg's best known poem is "Chicago." Note the gerunds (-ing verbs!) that create a sense of activity and labor. Note the personification of this vital city.

 

Chicago (1916)

By Carl Sandburg 1878–1967 Carl Sandburg
     

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

   Bareheaded,

   Shoveling,

   Wrecking,

   Planning,

   Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

 

How would you write a poem about your hometown?
What words would you use to describe it?

Think of similes ("fierce as a dog") and metaphors ("city of the big shoulders")
Note how he explores the paradoxical nature of the city: dark (prostitutes, wickedness, curses) and hopeful (proud, alive). This gives him versimillitude (realness) The city is a multi-faceted place.


This poem dialogues well with "I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman.
 

I Hear America Singing (1867)

By Walt Whitman 1819–1892 Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Note the repetition of "singing" and consider the different meanings this word takes from stanza to stanza. Whitman uses anaphora, a rhetorical device consisting of repetition, for emphasis.


Also check out:

"I, Too" by Langston Hughes            (This poem is a direct response to "I Hear America Singing")
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177020

"Fog" by Carl Sandburg
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174299

"I Am the People, the Mob" by Carl Sandburg
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174303