Chicago Poems

“Chicago Poems” is an early collection of poems by American writer, poet, and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg. Published in 1916 and his first by a mainstream publisher, this collection was a critical success and began Sandburg’s career as a notable writer. Sandburg was a champion of an American form of social realism that celebrated American people, industry, and agriculture. He expressed this sentiment in an easy-to-read and plain-speaking free verse, a style that is often compared to Walt Whitman. Sandburg began working on the “Chicago Poems” in 1912, after moving to the city from Milwaukee with his wife and their young children. He embraced the gritty realism of the city, its important and central location to American commerce, and the hardworking people who kept the industrial machine running. Lyrical, soulful, compassionate, and intimately human, Sandburg earned his reputation as the “poet of the people” with his loving treatment of the common man and his struggles. Among the dozens of poems in this honest and touching collection are many of his most famous, such as “Chicago”, “Fog”, “Who Am I?”, and “Under the Harvest Moon”. This collection by one of America’s most gifted poets is a moving meditation on love, loss, war, immigration, loneliness, and the beauty of the natural world.