Poetry
Chicago Poems
Carl Sandburg · 1916
Opening lines
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:
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
The collection opens on the city, addressed as a person: hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads, brutal, city of the big shoulders. Then come the streets and those who live in them: the drayman on his way to the penitentiary, the painted women under the gas lamps, the fish crier, the night watchmen of the skyscraper, Hungarians gathered as a family under the trees with a keg of beer and an accordion. Other pieces run to six lines: the fog comes on little cat feet, sits looking, and moves on.
Context
The magazine Poetry, founded in Chicago in 1912, published nine of these poems in March 1914, with Chicago first, which received the first Levinson Prize; The Dial saw in them only jargon, and others denounced their brutality. The volume was published by Henry Holt in April 1916 and at once established its author, a thirty-eight-year-old reporter. It belongs to what has been called the Chicago Renaissance, with Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser, and its free verse owes much to Walt Whitman.
Who it is for
One hundred and forty-six pieces in seven sections, in which six-line poems stand alongside long city poems. The language is simple and direct, and that is the deliberate choice.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author's reputation, and the source of the nickname, city of the big shoulders, that Chicago still bears.
Sources for this page 8
The pages consulted to check this page.