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Carl Sandburg - Chicago Poems

Carl Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. Two years later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year-old author found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him international acclaim.

Carl Sandburg worked from the time he was a young boy. He quit school following his graduation from eighth grade in 1891 and spent a decade working a variety of jobs. He delivered milk, harvested ice, laid bricks, threshed wheat in Kansas, and shined shoes in Galesburg's Union Hotel before traveling as a hobo in 1897.

Sandburg's experiences working and traveling greatly influenced his writing and political views.  He saw first-hand the sharp contrast between rich and poor, a dichotomy that instilled in him a distrust of capitalism.

THE SHOVEL MAN

     ON the street
Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across,
Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron
Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches;
Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve
          And a flimsy shirt open at the throat,
          I know him for a shovel man,
          A dago working for a dollar six bits a day
And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of
     him for one of the world's ready men with a pair
     of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild
     grapes that ever grew in Tuscany.