Carl Sandburg Essay Research Paper As a

Carl Sandburg Essay, Research Paper

As a child of an immigrant couple, Carl Sandburg was barely American himself,

yet the life, which he had lived, has defined key aspects of our great country,

and touched the hearts and minds of her people. Sandburg grew up in the American

Midwest, yet spent the majority of his life traveling throughout the states. The

country, which would define his style of poetry and his views of society,

government, and culture, would equally be defined by his writing, lecturing, and

the American dream he lived: The dream of becoming successful with only an idea

and the will to use it. Historically, Sandburg’s most defining poetic element is

his free verse style. His open views towards American democracy, labor, and war

earned him great respect, and even greater criticism. He was considered one of

America’s finest poets during his lifetime; moreover, he is now renowned as one

of America’s greatest poets of all time (Niven 388-406). August, his father, on

a typical hard labor job expected from an immigrant male raising a family in the

early nineteen hundreds. Odd jobs helped Carl support his family when he was

forced to work at the young age of thirteen. Although raised poor, Carl aspired

to travel the country and it’s cities. He accomplished this goal with great help

from the American rail system (Niven 388-392). Sandburg went on to become a

great and successful writer for several newspapers as well as author to many

books of poetry. After brief political success, Carl left office to write for

Milwaukee’s paper, "The Social Democratic Herald" in 1911. Then, just

a few years later, Sandburg starts work at the "Chicago Daily

News"(Niven 392-393). After a friend, Alfred Harcourt, risked his job to

get Sandburg published for the first time, Sandburg’s career took off. Even

despite massive criticism based only on his political views, Sandburg sold

thousands of books and became highly acclaimed (Lowell, 3012-3014). On January

12, 1920, Untemeyer, a writer for New York’s "New Republic" claims

that Sandburg is one of the two greatest living poets of the times (Macleigh

3018). Sandburg wrote a landmark six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. A

consummate platform performer, he roamed the United States for nearly a half

century, guitar in hand, collecting and singing American folk songs. For his own

children and children everywhere he wrote Rootabaga Stories, and Rootabaga

Pigeons, some of the first authentic American fairy tales. He was a journalist

by trade; his newspaper reportage and commentary documented labor, racial, and

economic strife and other key events of his times. But Carl Sandburg was first

and foremost a poet, writing poems about America in the American idiom for the

American people. The titles of his volumes of poetry testify to his major

themes: Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, Smoke and Steel, Good Morning, America, The

People, Yes. (Niven 399-400) Sandburg’s vision of the American experience was

shaped in the American Midwest during the complicated events that brought the

nineteenth century to a close. His parents were Swedish immigrants who met in

Illinois, where they had settled in search of a share of American democracy and

prosperity (Macleigh, 3016-3018). August Sandburg helped to build the first

cross-continental railroad, and in the twentieth century his son Carl was an

honored guest on the first cross-continental jet flight. August Sandburg was a

blacksmith’s helper for the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad in Galesburg,

Illinois, when his son was born on 6 January 1878 in a small cottage a few steps

away from the roundhouse and railroad yards. Carl August Sandburg was the second

child first son of the hardworking Sandburgs. He grew up speaking Swedish and

English, and, eager to be assimilated into American society, he Americanized his

name. In 1884 or 1885, "somewhere in the first year or two of school,"

he began to call himself Charles rather than the Swedish Carl because he had

said "the name Carl would mean one more Poor Swede Boy while the name

Charles filled the mouth and had ‘em guessing. (Niven 401-405) There were

seven children in the Sandburg family, and the two youngest sons died of

diphtheria on the same day in 1892. Charles Sandburg had to leave school at age

thirteen to work at a variety of odd jobs to supplement the family income. As a

teenager he was restless and impulsive, hungry for experience in the world

beyond the staid, introverted prairie town, which had always been his. At age

eighteen, he borrowed his father’s railroad pass and had his first look at

Chicago, the city of his destiny. In 1897 Sandburg joined the corps of more than

60,000 hoboes who found the American railroads an exhilarating if illicit free

ride from one corner of the United States to another. For three and a ha

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