Carl Sandburg 2 Essay Research Paper The

Carl Sandburg 2 Essay, Research Paper

The beloved poet, Carl Sandburg, changed the course of American poetry. He was a poet, novelist, journalist, and songwriter, yet the influence of his works have not always been acknowledged. Carl Sandburg’s evocations of American urban and rural life, compassion for people, and his love of nature, through his works have made an enormous contribution to the American literary scene.

Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878 to illiterate parents of Swedish decent in Galesburg, Illinois. Much of Sandburg’s literary works are a result of his life time observations. He, more generously than many of his fellow authors, left a detailed account of his wanderings, his numerous jobs, his early struggles, and his successes in life. His own life fascinated him.(Rogers 19) Therefore, he felt he wanted to share his fascination with the people he enjoyed writing about.

Carl Sandburg is so greatly remembered because his writing was considerably different from the writing of his contemporaries. He let his mind travel, and be free. His works included the use of free verse, colloquialisms, an original type of rhythm, and oddly structured, prosaic poetry that emphasized key phrases and images.(clc 35, 338) Sandburg was the first of a long line of poets and authors to use the words and phrases that he created in his poetry.

Sandburg’s style of writing is what changed the course of American poetry. Before Sandburg, most poetry and other literary works were considerably similar, along with dull and boring. He carried poetry to “new horizons.” He, many times, wrote of reality, which was not always what people wanted to read, but it was reality and it had to be dealt with. This is how his writing became so known, because he dealt with what was real in our fantasy world.

Sandburg was not afraid to express his true feelings and thought on people, society, nature, and life in general. One of his finest poetic achievements is a poem called The People, Yes. It is a poem about people in life, and everything life entails. The images in it range from a white man and an Indian man arguing over who knows more, to why children put beans in their ears when told not to. The People, Yes covers everyday dilemmas encountered by the common man, but have not been expressed, and it is mandated by none other than Carl Sandburg, the great American poet.

“The people is a myth, an abstraction.

And what myth would you put in place

of the people.

And what abstraction would you exchange

for this one.

And when has creative man not toiled

deep in myth.

And who fights for a bellyful only and

where is any nameworth remembering

for anything else than the human ab-

straction woven through it with in-

visible things.

“Precisely who and what is the people.”

Sandburg was what some might call obsessed with people, but in a positive way. He was amazed, and at the same time also disgusted with, all the diverse types of people who live in our society. The quote above is from his poem, The People, Yes. The poem’s expressions of love, hatred, happiness, and sorrow is based upon the questions in life that are answered by the people. Why are people such a puzzle. Why don’t the rich and the poor get along. Is there a way to describe and figure people out.…who knows. The answer is no one, not even Carl Sandburg, but he was the man who was able to express these thoughts in a poetic form, because he was so greatly interested with the people and their ways of life.

When Sandburg’s poems were made public, people had many different views on his writing. Some people really enjoyed it, others hated it, and others felt as if it was decent writing that you could read with a dispassionate feeling. His poems, mainly The People, Yes, were rejected just as much as they was accepted.

William Rose Benet, a critic, states “[of Sandburg's writing]…it has not enough cohesion. It has not enough structure….it does not think through, as does the modern radical economist, the situation in which modern civilization finds itself. Sandburg is too interested in the half-tones of humanity, the highlights of humor, the terse queerness. He is interested in atmosphere….The new sapience, it seems to me, is what Sandburg fails to show.”(clc 35,347) Now, on the other hand Amy Lowell, another critic, has a complete opposite view on the poem’s by Carl Sandburg. “The seeing eye- Mr. Sandburg has it to a superlative degree, and wedded to it, an imaginative utterance which owes nothing whatever to literature or tradition. It is a fascinating and baffling study this of examining how Mr. Sandburg does it….It is, more than anything else, the sharp, surprising rightness of his descriptions which gives Mr. Sandburg his high position in the poetry of today.”(clc 35,341)

These critics views are on the extreme opposite sides of the scale. Benet feels Sandburg’s poetry is uncohesive, unstructured, and just not sapient. While Lowell feels his poetry is imaginative and fascinating, along with baffling. If Sandburg were alive to read the analysis of his poetry by the critics, he probably would have writing a poem about it. It would have fascinated him, how two people could have such opposite views. In The People, Yes, a large percentage of the poem is based o

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