|
This
website is dedicated to
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.
|