The Legacy of Carl Sandburg

What brings into existence any great work of literature? Is it a natural gift, artistic vision, dumb luck, or a little bit of all three? As I was writing this paper I tried to keep that question in mind. As I was researching the author, Carl Sandburg, of the poem “Chicago” I decided to try to understand his work I needed to meet four criteria of knowledge of his past and background, literary terms used, a common element shared by him and the poem, and my immediate responses to his work.

The first criteria I want to go through is the common element shared by both the author and the poem, particularly the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the gap between the richest and poorest of the people. At the time that Carl Sandburg was writing “Chicago” he was living, ironically, in Chicago working as an editorial writer for the Chicago daily news. While there he was married Lillian Steichen, who he called Paula. At the time he was 38 and only just starting to have his work published. The first of which was published by Harriet Monroe for Poetry: a magazine of verse.

The first reason that I have noticed was a result of the Industrial revolution and how it affected the population. The Industrial revolution was a large migration of people from rural areas to the city, industrial, areas. This resulted in a population in an area that was far more than the resources could support. The major effect that this had was forcing people into living in close quarters which resulted in a larger crime rate, these were the same conditions that gave birth to Jack the Ripper. As the people were moving in, Carl Sandburg was moving in while at the time he was not one of the poorest, while he may have grownup poor.

With a large migration of people int...

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...he Industrial revolution and the crisis of poverty. As I read the poem for the first time I attempted to recall those feelings as I was noticing the different literature terms used in the poem. These words to some are just words, to others though they are inspirational and life-changing words that will live forever, but what is ironic is that Sandburg had no idea if his works would be anything more than words on paper.

Works Cited

Acadamy of American Poets. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/28. 2014. online. 18 February 2014.

Firebaugh, Glenn. "The Trend in Between-Nation Income Inequality." Annual Review of Sociology (2000): 323-352. online.

Persky, Joseph. "Journal of Regional Science." The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis (2008): 656-658. online.

Poetry Foundation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg. 2014. online. 18 Febuary 2014.