Major Works

• Chicago Poems
• Cornhuskers
• The Chicago Riots
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
• Abe Lincoln Grows Up
• Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow
• The People, Yes
• Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
• Storm Over the Land
• Remembrance Rock
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, reprinted
• Abraham Lincoln
• Harvest Poems

Family

• Father: Swedish immigrant August Sandberg, a blacksmith's helper for the C.B.& Q railroad in Galesburg for thirty-five years
• Mother: Swedish immigrant Clara Mathilda Anderson Sandberg, a hotel maid who became a midwife
• Sisters include Mary, Esther, and Martha Sandberg
• Brothers include Martin, Emil, and Fred Sandberg
• Daughter: Margaret
• Daughter: Janet
• Daughter: Helga
• Grandson: John Carl
• Grand-daughter: Karlen Paula

Homes

• Galesburg, Illinois
• Wisconsin, Milwaukee
• Maywood, Chicago
• Harbet, Michigan
• Flat Rock, North Carolina

Occupations

• odd jobs, milk-delivery boy, fireman, painter
• editor-in-chief of The Lombard Review
• assistant editor, To-Morrow magazine
• reporter for the Day Book, Chicago Daily News, International Socialist Review, and Milwaukee Journal
• secretary to Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel 
• associate editor, The Magazine of Business
• advertising copywriter
• editorial writer
• film critic
• motion picture editor
• poet
• lecturer
• folk song singer

Chronology

Resources

The Carl Sandburg Page provides an online list of Sandburg's major written works and the dates in which they were published.  This page provides links to online full texts of Sandburg's Chicago Poems and Cornhuskers.  It also gives a list of his children's books. A  brief list of books and two Carl Sandburg links are listed under the section titled "About Sandburg."
www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/Sandburg.htm

Updated July 26, 2001
Sherry O. Lofton, 2001
[email protected]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

By Sherry O. Lofton
Graduate student, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

Carl Sandburg was an amazing American writer who achieved many goals during his life time.  He was a journalist, a movie critic, a poet, and a historian.  During his career as a writer, he wrote several historical books about the life of Abraham Lincoln.  He is best known for his historical accounts of Abraham Lincoln's life, his 1919 Chicago race riot articles, and his Chicago Poems.  Percy H. Boynton, a Sandburg critic, referred to Carl Sandburg as being "The Voice of Chicago" in his book Some Contemporary Americans.  While focusing on Sandburg and the poetic style that he used in his Chicago Poems, Boynton states, "So as a poet he lives in the midst of the great spaces, but as a poet, too, he lives in the presence of beauty, and he finds it on every side-in the manifold moods of earth and sky and sea, in the innocence of childhood, in honest love and honest labor, in homely ways and homely places" (69).  According to Boynton, Carl Sandburg really knew how to capture the essence of one of America's greatest cities, therefore, making him the "Voice of Chicago." 

The Beginning and Influences 

Carl Sandburg was born January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois.  He was one of seven children born to both August and Carla Sandberg who were Swedish immigrants.  His father worked thirty-five years for the C.B.& Q Railroad as a blacksmith's helper.  His mother, Clara Anderson Sandberg, worked as a hotel maid and later became a midwife after getting married.  As a child, Carl was very eager to show that he was truly an American, not Swedish.  He changed the spelling of his last name from "Sandberg" to "Sandburg."  He also called himself "Charles" or "Charlie" because these names, in his opinion, sounded more American than "Carl."  After completing the eighth grade, Carl was forced to quit school in order to help support the family.  Since he was forced to quit school at such an early age, one might wonder where his interest in writing came from.  According to Penelope Niven, Sandburg's biographer, his sister Mary finished high school and became his teacher.  After receiving her diploma, she began teaching Carl from her high school texts.  Penelope Niven states, "Together they read and discussed Irving's Sketch Book, Scott's Ivanhoe, and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter" (23).  During his departure from public school, Sandburg did a number of odd jobs such as sweeping out and cleaning showcases at Harvey Craig's Drug Store and delivering newspapers.  It is ironic that he later became a reporter for the same newspaper that he delivered, the Chicago Tribune. On his way to work, at age seventeen, Sandburg would often visit the Knox and Lombard campuses.  While at Knox, he walked where Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas had debated in October 1858.  Penelope Niven states, "There, on a bronze plaque on the east front of Old Main Building, Charlie first read Lincoln's written words, and they were soon etched in his memory.  He regularly stopped to read what Lincoln said to twenty thousand people on a cold windy October day..." (26).  After that, Carl Sandburg studied Abraham Lincoln's words whenever he had a chance.  Little did he know at that time that he, himself, would become one of the most notable Abraham Lincoln biographer's of all time. 

As an adult, Sandburg attended Lombard College.  While attending college, he discovered his talents as a writer.  He received a journalist job working as editor-in-chief for the Lombard Review.  The Review was a college newspaper.  Sandburg also became very interested in literature as well as journalism.  One of the most important experiences of his first year was his English class.  Niven states, "He was introduced to British and European literature, and the encounter was explosive.  There, he met the work of Robert Browning, the first poet to influence him deeply" (49).   He also studied American authors such as Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, and Walt Whitman, but after three years at Lombard, Sandburg dropped out in order to pursue his own career as a writer. 

Sandburg's Career

Politics

Before going to college, Sandburg had served as a war correspondent during the Spanish-American War  for the Galesburg Evening Mail in 1898.  This also helped influence his choice of study while at Lombard College.  Once he dropped out of college, however, he became more than just a journalist.  He participated in politics, journalism, movie criticism, poetry, and prose.  In 1910, Sandburg helped organize the Social Democratic Party in Wisconsin.  He was also secretary to the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Emil Seidel, from 1910 to 1912.  During the birth of his political involvement, he used his writing skills as the editor of the Milwaukee Social-Democratic Herald and as a writer for Victor Berger's Political Action.  In later years, he became the Presidential Medal of Freedom lecturer at the University of Hawaii in 1934. 

Journalism

After working for political newspapers and magazines, Sandburg began writing for newspapers such as the Milwaukee Leader and Chicago World in 1912.  He worked as an editor for The Magazine of Business in 1913, and he worked for the Chicago Evening American in 1917.  Although Sandburg worked for many different newspapers and magazines, he spent much of his journalistic career reporting for the Chicago Daily News from 1917 to 1930.  While working as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, Sandburg covered the Chicago race riots in 1919.  He received great recognition for his coverage and became known throughout Chicago as one of the best journalist in the city.  In his articles, Sandburg showed fairness and sympathy toward blacks.  This was very uncommon for a white journalist.  During that year, he wrote a total of fifteen articles about the riots which were later collected and printed as a book by Harcourt and Company.  Although many critics admired Sandburg's articles on the race riots, Aldon Nielsen, critic and author of Reading Race: White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century, wrote critically of Sandburg's race riot articles and poems.  Nielsen wrote that Sandburg really didn't do a good job of representing black voices.  Nielsen wrote of "rare occasions in Sandburg's poetry when the nonwhite breaks through the veil of the poet's internalized systems of speech.  The times that Afro-America is heard most clearly in his poems are the times when Sandburg stops speaking of or for them and simply listens to the voice of the nonwhite" (36, 37).  Nielsen states that Sandburg seemed to be "operating within the poetic tradition of white speech" in the race riots. (34)  After leaving the Chicago Daily News, Sandburg worked as a columnist beginning in 1932 for the Chicago Daily Times.

 Film

Carl Sandburg worked as a film critic for the Chicago Daily News from 1920 to 1928.  Penelope Niven stated, "By 1910 twenty percent of all the movies in the world were produced in Chicago" (366).  Because Victor Lawson, Sandburg's publisher at the Daily News, believed that good coverage of film, theater, and concerts would increase circulation and advertising revenues, Sandburg was assigned the task of viewing six films a week for critical review.  Sandburg wrote over 2,000 reviews on films.  While working with films, Sandburg served as author of commentary for the U.S. Government film "Bomber".  He was also the author of captions for "Road to Victory", a mural photograph show.  Sandburg was truly a dynamic writer of different genres.

Literature

Although Carl Sandburg was involved in politics, journalism, and film, he still found time to write poetry.  During his early years as a poet, Sandburg wrote four volumes of poetry including Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, Smoke and Steel , and Slabs of the Sunburnt West from 1914 to 1922.  These poems focused on prairies and cities of the Midwest.  From 1928 to 1963, he wrote three more volumes of poetry titled Good Morning America, The People, Yes, and Honey and Salt.   As a writer of poetry, he was a democratic poet who expressed democratic ideas.  According to the editors of The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Third Edition, "Sandburg's subject matter was the people themselves, his tone affirmative, his diction simple, and his verse line long and unfettered by rhyme or regular meter" (1750).  Because Sandburg wrote poems that didn't rhyme, he was often criticized by writers like Robert Frost who didn't view free verse as poetry.   Sandburg loved to write descriptive poems.  He modeled his long open lines from Walt Whitman's poems, but he tried to come closer to ordinary speech than Whitman's efforts.  "Simple poems for simple people," Sandburg said (1750).  Because Sandburg appreciated the common working man, he gave praise to such individuals and depicted ordinary people in their everyday settings.  For example, in his Chicago Poems he wrote poems about everyday people including "The Shovel Man", "Onion Days", and "To A Contemporary Bunkshooter."   In "Onion Days", he talked about a widow named Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti who had to make a living picking onions all day.  The only joy that she had in her life was the knowledge that she would be a mother in three months.  Although he wrote about inspirational people that he saw in the streets of Chicago, he also wrote about the crooked and the sinful.  Percy Boynton described Sandburg in his book Some Contemporary Americans as not being one of those "men who dodge the issue of describing things as they see them" (69).  In his poem "To A Contemporary Bunkshooter", Sandburg spoke negatively of crooked bankers, business men, and lawyers.  He made the following comment which was taken from the poem itself in Chicago Poems:
 

          "It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
           hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
           of running.

           I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
           the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth.  He had lined
           up against him, the same crooks and strong-arm men
           now lined up with you paying your way." (Sandburg, 61)
 

Sandburg was obviously a man who believed in equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal treatment for all people; therefore, he didn't approve of individuals who took advantage of the misfortunate, and he tried to express this in his poetry.

Sandburg wrote a lot of prose during his lifetime.  Because he was so deeply moved by Abraham Lincoln's speech printed on a plaque, he decided to write about the life of Abraham Lincoln from childhood to adulthood.  In his quest to capture the life of Lincoln, Sandburg wrote a series of historical accounts of the president's life.  In 1927, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years was published.  Only a year after his book was released,  Abe Lincoln Grows Up was published.  Sandburg continued to write about the president in a series of other biographical books including Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, A Lincoln Preface, and Abraham Lincoln.  He also wrote children's stories such as the famous Rootabaga Stories and Potato Face. 
 

Carl Sandburg: The Literary Journalist

Carl Sandburg worked for several newspapers and political magazines during his lifetime, but he also found time to become a literary journalist.  Although he wrote different kinds of genres, he was a reporter at heart.  Even as a child Sandburg was compelled to report the news.  Many people believe that the very first thing that Sandburg tried to print was a poem but it wasn't.  According to Penelope Niven, Sandburg's biographer, Sandburg and a childhood friend named John Sjodin tried to obtain their first fortune by printing a mail-order journal called Not a Cent. Both Sandburg and John invested money in a little printing press for less than ten dollars.  With the little press, they printed two issues of the catalogue, but Not a Cent quickly died after the first two issues because they didn't charge anything for the subscriptions.  They had originally planned to charge people only after the catalogue gained popularity.  The catalogue was a form of journalism.  Sixty Galesburgians who received the copies received information about "slightly used knives and books, and a slightly used Waterbury watch." (23) 

As an adult, he loved to use subjects from the news to create beautiful, newsworthy poetry.  He simply cold not stick with one genre.  He was a restless soul when it came to writing.  Penelope Niven, Sandburg's biographer, stated, "In 1920, with three successful books of poetry to his credit and two of the most significant poetry awards of the period, he could have worked solely on further development of poetic technique, vision and theme.  Yet he could not seem to confine himself to poetry.  He craved variety, was incessantly reconfiguring the components of his work into different designs" (363).  What work is Niven referring to in this statement?  It would appear that she is referring to journalism.  If this is true, then Sandburg was a man who believed that journalism shaped literature.  It would also be safe to say that he believed that journalism gave poetry essence, direction, and purpose.   Most critics argue that Sandburg was really a poet at heart, but when one reads his poetry, a big question comes to one's mind.  Why did Sandburg feel the need to report on people, places, and events in his poems?  Most of his poems can be connected to some news event.  Others are simply reports on people and their lives.  Its almost as if he was trying to capture the time by describing front page news and lifestyle news in poetry form.  While reading his poetry, it is also safe to say that Sandburg tried to use his journalism and poetry as a tool to help bring about social change.  For example, In January of 1918 an article, written by Carl Sandburg, was published in the International Socialist Review titled "Haywood of The I.W.W.," but Sandburg used the name Jack Phillips for the author's name instead of his own.  Because he chose to write about such controversial subjects such as wage slavery, unfair treatment, and war, he would use variant names such as Jack Phillips and Militant when he identified the author who wrote the piece.  In this article, Sandburg attacked wage slavery and asked if the vision of industrial democracy would ever be attained.  He used sensationalism in order to stir emotion in the reader when he referred to wage slavery as being "the shackles of capitalist."  He also encouraged the socialist movement when he suggested that workers should go on strike.  While writing the article, he educated the workers by describing how to go on strike.  He suggested that workers should refuse to make or transport any goods.  How does this journalistic subject matter find its way into his poetry?  Sandburg started working for the International Socialist Review in 1915.  He was still writing articles for the Review in 1917.  In 1916, he published a book called Chicago Poems, and in this book, he wrote several poems about the injustice of the industrial period including "They Will Say," "Halsted Street Car," "Clark Street Bridge," and "Mill-Doors."   While working as a reporter for the International Socialist Review, Sandburg constantly viewed the injustice of the mills, factories, and sweat shops.  He reported that workers were paid unfairly and that they were overworked.  In his poem "Mill-Doors," Sandburg used a sarcastic tone to describe the poor wages that the mill workers received.  He also focused on the physical fatigue that he saw upon the worker's faces and fingers.  He ended the poem by saying "you are old before you are young."  There is some reference to child labor in this line.  Because children working in mills were forced to work at such an early age, they were not given an opportunity to enjoy their youth. Hoping to bring about social change, Sandburg used poetry as a reporting tool.  Poetry was just a different avenue of reporting his first love "news." 

Other subjects within the news also made their way into Sandburg's poetry.  He simply couldn't resist the temptation.  In 1914, Sandburg wrote a poem called "Jaws" which was later published in his collection of Chicago Poems in 1916.  "Jaws" was clearly a report on the expansion of World War I.  It's amazing how much of a journalistic voice he used in this one poem.  He not only provided the year of the expansion but also the week and the month.  He also spoke of seven nations who were involved in the war.  In an attempt to make his reader appreciate the time, he stated the following in "Jaws":

          "I was listening, you were listening, the whole world 
           was listening,
           And all of us heard a Voice murmuring: 
          "I am the way and the light,
           He that believeth on me
           Shall not perish
           But shall have everlasting life."
           Seven nations listening heard the Voice and answered:
           "O Hell!"  (Sandburg, 94)

This whole poem reads like a news report.  Not only does it give the reader the who, what, and when, it also gives the reader information about what was being played on the radio during that time, sermons.  The voice that each nation was hearing was the "radio voice."  It is most unlikely that he was referring to the actual voice of God when he said that each individual answered the voice with an "O Hell!"  Because the geographical scale of the war grew at such a tremendous rate in 1914 within the first week of August, many people believed that they were viewing the "beginning of the end."  Sermons and advertising were very alive on the radio in 1914; however, on April 7, 1917, the U.S. entered the war and all amateur and commercial use of radio came to an end in the United States.  Stations were ordered by the president to shut down or be taken over by the government  According to Thomas H.White, a radio historian, radio became a government monopoly reserved for the war effort.  During World War I, Carl Sandburg wrote pro-war pieces for the government which were backed by American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, but at the same time, he wrote under the variant name of Jack Phillips for the antiwar International Socialist Review.  While working for the Review, he wrote poems such as "Buttons" and "Masses."  These poems captured the feelings of those Americans who were against war, therefore, making him not just the voice of Chicago but the voice of the unheard and often criticized anti-war citizens.  Once again, Sandburg was reporting the facts through poetry.  Strangely, on October 29, 1917 a poem called "The Four Brothers" appeared in the Chicago Evening Post.  It was a pro-war poem that was reprinted in several newspapers and magazines across the country; however, Carl Sandburg's socialist voice rose up in certain lines in the poem.  The sensationalism he used to describe men with torn throats who were calling for water raises yet another question within the reader's mind.  Was Sandburg really trying to write a pro-war poem or an anti-war poem?  In either case, one thing is evident.  Sandburg was using a poem to report the news, therefore, making him a literary journalist. 

The Death of a Literary Journalist

Carl Sandburg spent his last years living in Flat Rock, North Carolina.  He moved to Flat Rock in 1945.  While living in Flat Rock, Sandburg continued to write about the life of Abraham Lincoln which he originally started in 1927.  He also continued to write poems.  On July 22, 1967, Carl Sandburg died at the age of 89.  Throughout his life, he had managed to write literature and journalism at the same time, but from his style and subject matter, one can only conclude that his voice wa that of a literary journalist.

Study Guide for "Anna Imroth"

We have studied how Carl Sandburg used literature as an avenue for reporting the news.  Many of his poems were extensions of news reports that he focused on as a journalist.  Read Carl Sandburg's poem "Anna Imroth" which appeared in his 1916 publication of Chicago Poems.  This poem can be located at the link below.
Next, answer the following questions using the information given on Sandburg above.
www.bartleby.com/165/28.html

1.  What journalistic qualities does "Anna Imroth" show?
2.  What makes you think that Anna Imroth was a real person?
3.  What theme is Carl Sandburg presenting in this poem?
4.  Who or what is he attacking?
5.  How is this poem similar to "Mill-Doors?"
 

Works Cited

• Boynton, Percy H.  Some Contemporary Americans.  New York: Noble Offset Printers, Inc., 1969.
• Lee, Lisa.  "Carl Sandburg: 1878-1967)." 1998. University of North Carolina at Pembroke Online.  17 July 2001.
• Nielsen, Aldon.  Reading Race: White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988.
• Niven, Penelope.  Carl Sandburg: A Biography.  New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991.
• Sandburg, Carl.  Chicago Poems.  New York: Henry Holt And Company, 1916. 
• Wienen, Mark W.  " Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)."  Modern American Poetry.  1999-2001.  Modern American Poetry Online.  Oxford University Press, 15 July 2001. 
• Wilson, Clyde, ed.  Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth-Century American Historians.  Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Company, 1983.
• White, Thomas H.  "United States Early Radio History: A Wireless Message." 21 July 2001. United States Early Radio History Online.  26 July 2001. 
• "Carl (August) Sandburg." Discovering Most Studied Authors Online.  Fri. July 13 3:27 2001 copyright (c) 2001.  The Gale Group.  All rights reserved.
• The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Third Edition.  New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1989.