Carl Sandburg (1876-1967), considered a poet for the people, is also well known for his six-volume biography of Lincoln. When Harriet Monroe published “Chicago” in Poetry in 1914, Sandburg was already 38 years old. His first book of poems, Chicago Poems, was published in 1916. The literary elite did not approve of Sandburg’s style, and his poetry fell into disfavor as early as the 1920s, but he had a following among younger poets such as Langston Hughes, who would imitate his use of popular language.
"Chicago" is located on several websites, but the link to National Public Radio, NPR, will enable you to hear Sandburg read several poems, as well.
After reading "Chicago" try the following questions:
Do you notice anything particular about the VERBS in this poem?
What words are repeated in the text?
Who is the “you” in the text?
Do you feel this poem could be classified as committed literature? Why or why not?
What impression of the city of Chicago does the poem communicate?
Some of Carl Sandburg’s reports on racial tensions, originally written for publication in the Chicago Daily News, were collected in The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919 (1919). The riots started July 27 at the 29th Street beach and lasted through August 3. Eugene Williams was the youth first killed. Before it was over, twenty-three African Americans and 15 whites were dead, and another 537 people were wounded (342 black, 195 white). Sandburg provides an account of the escalation of violence that led to the rioting, and he also describes the inadequate housing situation of African Americans. The book begins:
"The so-called race riots in Chicago during the last week of July 1919, started on a Sunday at a bathing beach. A colored boy swam across an imaginary segregation line. White boys threw rocks at him and knocked him off a raft. He was drowned. Colored people rushed to a policeman and asked for the arrest of the boys throwing stones. The policeman refused. As the dead body of the drowned boy was being handled, more rocks were thrown, on both sides. The policeman held on to his refusal to make arrests. Fighting then began that spread to all the borders of the Black Belt. The score at the end of three days was recorded as twenty negroes dead, fourteen white men dead, and a number of negro houses burned.
The riots furnished an excuse for every element of Gangland to go to it and test their prowess by the most ancient ordeals of the jungle. There was one section of the city that supplied more white hoodlums than any other section. It was the district around the stockyards and packing houses."
- Read other poems by Carl Sandburg on-line:
http://carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm
-Biography of Carl Sandburg on the Modern American Poetry site:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sandburg/sandburg.htm
-Biography of Carl Sandburg on the Academy of American Poets site:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/28
-Carl Sandburg Home Connemara, National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina:
http://www.nps.gov/carl
No comments:
Post a Comment