Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg. Writer and Poet (1878-1967). 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... , The first five lines from Sandburg's 1914 poem "Chicago" , , Poet, journalist and historian, Carl Sandburg was one of the most famous literary figures of the 20th century. Born in Galesburg, Illinois, the son of Swedish immigrants, he left home in his early teens to travel, earning money digging potatoes, harvesting wheat, blacking stoves and working on railroads and steamboats. Many of the themes and images Sandburg used in his poems were of the rural and urban laborers he encountered. , , Sandburg published his first book of poetry, In Reckless Ecstasy, in 1904. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Milwaukee and married Lillian Steichen, sister of photographer Edward Steichen. The family moved here to 4646 North Hermitage Avenue in 1912, and Sandburg began writing for the Chicago Daily News. It was here that the famous poem "Chicago" was written. , , Early collections of his poems include Chicago Poems (1916) and Smoke and Steel (1920). Sandburg's use of free verse -- lacking regular rhymes or metrical pattern -- scattered with street-corner slang and anecdotes ushered in an era of poetic modernism. , , Sandburg also wrote a six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. The last volume earned him the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940. His Complete Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1951, and in 1964 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. , , [Caption with photos in the middle:] The cover of an anthology of Sandburg poems alludes to his frequent urban and agricultural themes. Above, a hand-corrected typescript for "Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard," published in 1916 in the collection Chicago Poems. ,