Chicago Poems

by Carl Sandburg

Book Overview

Now considered possibly Illinois' greatest poet, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) saw himself as a bard of the working class. Chicago Poems brought him to national attention and is one of the few Chicago classics that can also be termed an American classic. It includes such famous poems as "Chicago" and "Fog," as well as many others whose subjects range from the lives of ordinary citizens to city scenes and World War I. Written in powerful free verse,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252062345
• ISBN13: 9780252062346
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Beyond the familiar cliches, an apt & modern collection

A few weeks after September 11 2001, I came across the poem "Skyscraper" by Sandburg by chance in a huge volume of American poetry. In the millions of lines written about that horrible day, I found his words from 70 years ago to be the most moving. Here are some lines from that poem:--------------------------------BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul.Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys.It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories...Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors....Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the wind whistles a wild song without wordsAnd so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor.Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier begging at back doors hundreds of miles away and the brick-layer who went to state's prison for shooting another man while drunk...Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all ends of the earth.Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building.--------------------------------I have never studied Sandburg, but it seems to me he shares that same love of humanity and fairness that Walt Whitman was so famous for, along with the ability to craft lines as amazing as "hold the building to a turning planet". His love of his modern city seems like a remnant from another age, but his absolute belief in class equality is as relevant as any 2001 street protest.

worth much more than what you pay

Sandburg is one of the greatest poets the US has had, so much that he became an American icon. His poems use a language that everyone can understand and he speaks of subjects that we all know. He is one of the finest poets we've ever had, and to be able to get this collection for around a dollar, you'd have to be a fool to pass on this.

You Owe It To Yourself ...

When such a quantity of beautiful and profound poems comes along at such a ludicrously low price, you owe it to yourself to get it. Carry this book in your work bag, take it on the bus, and get a daily dose of Carl Sandburg, the Lowry of poetry, with his word-paintings of factories, immigrants, war, socialism, prostitution and so on. Buy it for a friend or donate it to a fellow passenger! Wonderful ...

The best 80 cents (plus shipping) you'll ever spend!

An AMAZING anthology of this great poet's work. The poem "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter" is more timely today than when it was written. Powerful, awesome, and wonderful.