Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems is another great collection of poems. Sandburg grew up in Chicago and these poems are a gritty portrayal of the alienation and superficiality of urban life. Still, he also captures the fleeting moments of beauty amidst the harsh city setting of Chicago. In the poems, he mainly finds beauty in people. Although Sandburg doesn’t overlook the beauty of nature, he mainly observes how the city structures overshadow nature and finds beauty, instead, in the people living in the overwhelming city-scape. Sandburg, like Jeffers, seems to be aloof to the whole avant-garde poetry of the time and just writes how he wants to write rather than desperately trying too hard to be “new.” Anyway, I think you’ll enjoy this gritty poem by Sandburg of a struggling Chicagoan.
JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather.
He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years.
He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered.
There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived—he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
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