Carl Sandburg and American Poetry: Edited by Nina Lee Braden

Social Background: Two important factors making period unique:  the First World War  the sense dislocation and fragmentation Additional factor:  loss of faith

American Poetry:  Experimenting with new forms and content  New age = new literary expression  Great poetry boom About 1000 poets, over 1000 volumes  General Aim = to express the modern spirit, the sense of fragmentation and dislocation

Expatriates  Many early modernists = expatriates  Influenced by Dante; French Symbolists  Affected by European postwar disillusionment and loss of faith  Pervading sense of the meaningless destruction  Rottenness of civilization

The Major Writers  Robert Frost ( )  Carl Sandburg (1878 － 1967)  Gertrude Stein ( )  T. S. Eliot ( )  Ezra Pound ( )  William Carlos Williams ( )

Carl Sandburg ( )  American poet, historian, novelist and folklorist ， folk musician ， political organizer, reporter  the singing bard  a central figure in the “Chicago Renaissance”

Early Life  Born in Galesburg, IL  Parents poor Swedish immigrants  Father, August, a blacksmith and railroad worker  Name originally Johnson  Mother Clara Anderson, a hotel maid

Boyhood  Quit school after eighth grade  Spent a decade working: –delivered milk –harvested ice –laid bricks –threshed wheat –shined shoes –traveled as a hobo

Early Adulthood  When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Sandburg volunteered for service, and at the age of twenty was ordered to Puerto Rico, where he spent days battling only heat and mosquitoes.  Upon his return to his hometown later that year, he entered Lombard College, supporting himself as a call fireman.

Education  College years shaped literary talents and political views  Joined Poor Writers' Club  Founder Professor Phillip Green Wright paid for publication of Sandburg’s pamphlet Reckless Ecstasy (1904)

  Experiences working and traveling influenced writing and political views   Saw first-hand the sharp contrast between rich and poor – – a dichotomy that instilled in him a distrust of capitalism Influence of Early Work

Politics and Marriage  Increasingly concerned with the plight of the American worker  In 1907 worked as an organizer for the Wisconsin Social Democratic party, writing and distributing political pamphlets and literature  Met Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908

Moved to Milwaukee Published Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918) Smoke and Steel (1920), an attempt to find beauty in modern industrialism Becoming a Poet

 Sandburgs moved to Chicago; Carl an editorial writer for the Chicago Daily News.  Sandburg felt a strong affinity for the big brash city. Chicago

  Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine.   Two years later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year- old author found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him international acclaim. Breakthrough

Mature Work  In the twenties, he started some of his most ambitious projects, including his study of Abraham Lincoln.  His Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, published in 1926, was Sandburg's first financial success.  The War Years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in  Sandburg's Complete Poems won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951.

 From 1945 he lived as a farmer and writer, breeding goats and folk-singing, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

Evaluation   One of the best known and most widely read poets in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. His subject matter is the people themselves.   Like Walt Whitman, Sandburg exclaimed: “I am the People, the Mob!”   His poetic tone is always affirmative, and he is free from rhyme and regular meter.

 In Whitmanesque free verse, he sings about factories and the building of skyscrapers.  Sandburg’s form is the free verse with its lines of irregular length, its looser speech rhythms, and the absence of end rhyme.

Never Monotonous  Won Pulitzer prizes in history and poetry  Always trying new forms of writing and taking on new challenges  "I had studied monotony. I decided whatever I died of, it would not be monotony."

The Poetry  Poems are often full of slang and the language of ordinary Americans.  Wrote poems about Chicago- -the "stormy, husky, brawling" life of the city and the lonely peace of the prairie.  Wrote about real people with real problems; wrote by his own rules.

Comparison to Whitman  To many, Sandburg was a latter-day Walt Whitman, writing expansive, evocative urban and patriotic poems and simple, childlike rhymes and ballads.  At heart he was totally unassuming, notwithstanding his national fame. What he wanted from life, he once said, 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."

Role in Modern Poetry  Played a significant role in the development in poetry that took place during the first two decades of the 20th century  A breaker of conventions and an innovator of American poetry

“Fog”  Among the few exceptions that mark Sandburg's break from free verse poetry. A mere six lines long, written in verse-form, an innocent expression of finding beauty in an ordinary world.  Delightful poem, using simple imagery.  Deceptively simple: –like a haiku poem –more than description of misty air –Fog leaves the natural, becomes surreal and ethereal, always anchored to familiar reality

Fog The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

 He was established as the poet of the American people, pleading their cause; reciting their songs, stories, and proverbs; celebrating their spirit and their vernacular; and commemorating the watershed experiences of their shared national life. Poet, Singer, Historian

Sandburg’s Work   Volumes of Poetry – –In Reckless Ecstasy (1904) – –Chicago Poems (1916) – –Cornhuskers (1918) – –Smoke and Steel (1920) – –Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922) – –Selected Poems (1926) – –Good Morning, America (1928) – –The People, Yes (1936) – –Complete Poems (1950) – –Harvest Poems (1950) – –Honey and Salt (1963)

Sandburg’s Work   Biographies and Other –Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926) –The American Songbag (1927) –Steichen the Photographer (1929) –Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932) –Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939) –The New American Songbag (1950) –Always the Young Strangers(1953)

 Six-volume biography on Abraham Lincoln  Believed that previous biographies had idealized Lincoln too much  Collected his favorite songs in The American Songbag  Numerous novels and poems  Collected letters published in 1968 Final Notes

Works Cited  alism.htm   alism.htm 