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Chicago Poems
Chicago Poems
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Carl Sandburg didn't have to resort to the cheap literary reminiscence as many writers of free verse do. No gods or goddesses in him. No Arthurian filigrees. He writes about people. Just people. Just you with me. Just himself with some one else. He didn't have to go back to Athens or any of the trick golden ages of culture. He stays in Chicago and writes. In America. And he writes of ordinary things. Of the most ordinary things. Of the things the artists so frequently say no one has the right to put into poetry.
Something as tangible as a handful of earth. Something as intangible as the ideal.
There's a lot of good earth in Sandburg's soul. And his heels have been dipped in dreams. He's never had to travel for subjects, like so many artists. He's found enough right where he is. He used Chicago as the hub of his wheel. But the circumference of his wheel is unseen. It's spokes die in the invisible in reaching for it.
He believed the everyday words will do. He made the best use of the worst phrases. He adopted some of the meanest colloquialisms. They seemed to fit in exactly not only with the purpose but the artistry of his verse.
It is the clearness and validity interpretation of this group of poems which gives this book its greatness.
"Chicago Poems" is a unique and necessary document in the case against the dominant ideals of our generation. It is a simple record of facts, rather than a preachment based on facts.
Carl Sandburg recognized that our pseudo-civilization denies to millions of men in America the simple joys of the beasts—good fare, "the great sky, and the reckless rain," to say nothing of the complex joys of men. He recognizes that an economy which knows no values but "bread and wages" is a false economy. He perceives that competitive commerce as an end in itself is ghastly and absurd. He denies that the social order built on "a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights" can endure. But he seldom voices this recognition and denial.
For the most part he was willing simply to see and utter.
Something as tangible as a handful of earth. Something as intangible as the ideal.
There's a lot of good earth in Sandburg's soul. And his heels have been dipped in dreams. He's never had to travel for subjects, like so many artists. He's found enough right where he is. He used Chicago as the hub of his wheel. But the circumference of his wheel is unseen. It's spokes die in the invisible in reaching for it.
He believed the everyday words will do. He made the best use of the worst phrases. He adopted some of the meanest colloquialisms. They seemed to fit in exactly not only with the purpose but the artistry of his verse.
It is the clearness and validity interpretation of this group of poems which gives this book its greatness.
"Chicago Poems" is a unique and necessary document in the case against the dominant ideals of our generation. It is a simple record of facts, rather than a preachment based on facts.
Carl Sandburg recognized that our pseudo-civilization denies to millions of men in America the simple joys of the beasts—good fare, "the great sky, and the reckless rain," to say nothing of the complex joys of men. He recognizes that an economy which knows no values but "bread and wages" is a false economy. He perceives that competitive commerce as an end in itself is ghastly and absurd. He denies that the social order built on "a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights" can endure. But he seldom voices this recognition and denial.
For the most part he was willing simply to see and utter.
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