Kelvyn Park High School - Kelvynian Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 11 text:

CARL SANDBURG Readers of poetry were greatly startled in 1916, when an unknown poet wrote his first volume of verse, Chicago Poems. The poems were written in vigorous free verse, using common, ordinary words in strange, new ways. The young poet had found success with his stories of people, factory machines, city streets, and skyscrapers, in .poems that used the language of the laboring man, including his slang. Fame was strange to this son of a Swedish immigrant farmer, who at 13 had quit school and was working as a dishwasher, porter, or milk wagon driver. As a young man he had enlisted in the Spanish American War, come back home, and entered Lombard University. As a graduate he worked for the Chicago Daily News, learning a great deal about Chicago and its people. However with his unlimited curiosity and energy urging him on. he began to move all over our great country. As folk-lorist, story-teller, biographer of Lincoln, and novelist, he is known and loved by all Americans. But his poems about Chicago are his most popular works, giving Carl Sandburg just claim to the title of The Chicago Poet. CHICAGO Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked, and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys . And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities, Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoving, Wrecking, - ' Planning, Building, breaking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laugh-I ing with white teeth, Under the terrible burden of destiny as a young man laughs, Laughing even aqgnfignorant fighter 'who' has ost a battle, that Sandburg POEMS by Carl Sandburg. 1916, by Henry Holt and Company, Copyright, 1944 by Carl Sandberg. Re- printed by permission of the publishers.

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CONNEMARA FARM FLAT RoC 'N'c' December 5, 1954 Dear Miss Sachs: tm Of course you may dedicatekthe yearbook of Kelvyn Park High School, I5 winter and in summer, about 40 years ago I often walked on Monroe Street east Q6 Halsted. Ever good wishes - fm-D S01-M 7 J

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