Carl Sandburg: Poet, Artist and Contemporary Visionary of the 20th Century. Focuses on his life, his accomplishments and themes.

Carl Sandburg

"What is instinct? What is thought? Where is the absolute line between the two. Nobody knows-as yet" (Allen Fire 3). Sandburg thought hard while he wrote using only his quick instinct, which made his writings come alive, free, flowing poetry on themes he developed while living in the Midwest. Sandburg loved and wrote in detail about the beauties of everyday items in the Midwest such as the workforce, that no one at the time truly paid attention too. The romantic naturalist who focused on simple splendors of life created free verse poems with passionate and naturalistic values (Crowder 1). A theme that appears in most of his poems is respect to the common man (Allen Fire 1). He created most of his themes by growing up poor and neglected by his parents in the Midwest, where the poor blue-collars and farmers worked. He decided to fight in the war after he left his home but got out of the war as soon as possible and started working low paying jobs. He got his first real job, as a Chicago Daily News writer, which allowed him to work on his poetry and allowed him the ability to gather connections that would help him succeed in the poetry scene. He eventually got his poems published in popular poetry publications and was recognized by many event organizers (Carl 1). He was soon reading his poetry to large crowds of poetry enthusiasts, children, and just the common man. In the beginning he would read a few of his poems and then he would read a barrage of Walt Whitman poems to show his admiration of the man (Crowder 1). Later in his life he wrote some award winning books, but was more notable for his poetry. Sandburg was criticized throughout his life...