At Home:
The City and Suburbs
Sandburg and his wife, Lillian (whom he called “Paula”), sought out peaceful homes that offered a respite from the bustle of the city. Sandburg would write many of his poems and letters at home. As time went on, their homes became increasingly rural and bucolic, until eventually they left Chicago — first for Michigan, and later North Carolina.
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At Work:
Newspapers and Magazines
Sandburg was initially drawn to Chicago by the prospect of a job at a newspaper. Newspaper work provided a decent living, and even after Sandburg gained literary recognition, he continued to write for newspapers. He reported on Chicago’s race riots and was one of the earliest film critics, writing several movie reviews a week.
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Around Town:
Walking the City
Sandburg liked to take long walks around Chicago to clear his head, find inspiration for poetry, and interact with people. People recognized him by his leather cap with a broken visor and long leather jacket. His observations from walking the streets and riding the streetcars made their way into both his poems and his newspaper stories.
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The Literary Scene:
Critiques and Performances
Sandburg balanced his quiet home life with occasional forays into Chicago’s literary scene. When he wasn’t working, he spent time in the Tower Town neighborhood, then a low-rent district attractive to artists and intellectuals. He became friends with writers Ben Hecht and Sherwood Anderson, the editors at Poetry Magazine, and political radicals.
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The Ravenswood Home
4646 N. Hermitage Ave., Chicago
When Sandburg arrived in Chicago in 1912, he moved into an upstairs apartment in the Ravenswood neighborhood. Sandburg loved the peaceful, wooded backyard and the sounds of the rustling trees he heard from his window. In early 1913, he and his wife, Paula, settled into a routine in which Sandburg reported for newspapers during the days, ate dinner with the family in the evening, and worked on poems at night.
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“It’s been mystically wonderful lately, that backyard, with a half moon through the poplars to the south in a haze, and rustlings, always high or low rustlings on the ground and in the trees, a sort of grand “hush-hush, child.” And as the moon slanted in last night and the incessant rustlings went on softly, I thought that if we are restless and fail to love life big enough, it’s because we have been away too much from the moon and the elemental rustlings.”
—Private letter from Carl Sandburg to Paula Sandburg, Sept. 1912
—Private letter from Carl Sandburg to Paula Sandburg, Sept. 1912
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The Ravenswood Home (cont.)
4646 N. Hermitage Ave., Chicago
Shortly after moving to Chicago, Paula became pregnant with their second child. In November of 1913, the Sandburgs hired a doctor to help deliver the baby in the house. The child, who they planned to name Madeline, did not survive the birth. Sandburg wrote about the tragic event in a poem, “Never Born,” which was published in 1920.
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Never Born
The time has gone by.The child is dead.
The child was never even born
Why go on? Why so much as begin?
How can we turn the clock back now
And not laugh at each other
As ashes laugh at ashes?
— Carl Sandburg, 1920
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The Maywood Home
616 S. 8th Ave., Maywood
In 1914, seeking more space and what Paula called “our own soil,” the Sandburgs moved to a small house in the western suburb of Maywood. Paula was excited to plant floral vines: “Scarlet morning glory and verbenas and more than I can tell!” she wrote in an excited letter. In 1916, their daughter Janet was born. Sandburg captured an image of Janet and their eldest daughter, Margaret, sleeping together in an unpublished poem.
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The two sisters in sleepers
Tucked in the sheets of their trundles
Swaddled and put away in the dark,
These are sparrows under the eaves.
— Excerpt from “Two Sisters,” Unpublished
Tucked in the sheets of their trundles
Swaddled and put away in the dark,
These are sparrows under the eaves.
— Excerpt from “Two Sisters,” Unpublished
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The Elmhurst Home
331 S. York St., Elmhurst
By 1919, the Sandburgs had three daughters and an Irish setter, and they felt the Maywood home had become too small. They bought a house at 331 S. York St. in the western suburb of Elmhurst, which Sandburg called “The Happiness Place.” They had an even larger yard with pines and poplar trees, and Elmhurst — then on the very edge of the prairie — felt even more peaceful than Maywood. Sandburg still used the commuter train to go to Chicago for work and socializing.
Sandburg continued writing poems from home, and he wrote most of the first volume of his Abraham Lincoln biography, The Prairie Years, in the Elmhurst home. When his daughters distracted him from writing, he made up what he called “American fairy-tale” stories to entertain them. Many eventually became part of the Rootabaga Stories, a series of popular children’s books. The Sandburgs lived in Elmhurst for more than a decade before moving to Harbor Country, Michigan in 1930.
Sandburg continued writing poems from home, and he wrote most of the first volume of his Abraham Lincoln biography, The Prairie Years, in the Elmhurst home. When his daughters distracted him from writing, he made up what he called “American fairy-tale” stories to entertain them. Many eventually became part of the Rootabaga Stories, a series of popular children’s books. The Sandburgs lived in Elmhurst for more than a decade before moving to Harbor Country, Michigan in 1930.
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The Two Skyscrapers Who Decided to Have a Child, 1922
Two skyscrapers stood across the street from each other in the Village of Liver-and-Onions. In the daylight when the streets poured full of people buying and selling, these two skyscrapers talked with each other the same as mountains talk.In the night time when all the people buying and selling were gone home and there were only policemen and taxicab drivers on the streets, in the night when a mist crept up the streets and 134 threw a purple and gray wrapper over everything, in the night when the stars and the sky shook out sheets of purple and gray mist down over the town, then the two skyscrapers leaned toward each other and whispered.
Whether they whispered secrets to each other or whether they whispered simple things that you and I know and everybody knows, that is their secret. One thing is sure: they often were seen leaning toward each other and whispering in the night the same as mountains lean and whisper in the night.
High on the roof of one of the skyscrapers was a tin brass goat looking out across prairies, and silver blue lakes shining like blue porcelain breakfast plates, and out across silver snakes of winding rivers in the morning sun. And high on the roof of the other skyscraper was a tin brass goose looking out across prairies, and silver blue lakes shining like blue porcelain breakfast plates, and out across silver snakes of winding rivers in the morning sun.
Now the Northwest Wind was a friend of the two skyscrapers. Coming so far, coming five hundred miles in a few hours, coming so fast always while the skyscrapers were standing still, standing always on the same old street corners always, the Northwest Wind was a bringer of news.
“Well, I see the city is here yet,” the Northwest Wind would whistle to the skyscrapers.
And they would answer, “Yes, and are the mountains standing yet way out yonder where you come from, Wind?”
“Yes, the mountains are there yonder, and farther yonder is the sea, and the railroads are still going, still running across the prairie to the mountains, to the sea,” the Northwest Wind would answer.
And now there was a pledge made by the Northwest Wind to the two skyscrapers. Often the Northwest Wind shook the tin brass goat and shook the tin brass goose on top of the skyscrapers.
“Are you going to blow loose the tin brass goat on my roof?” one asked.
“Are you going to blow loose the tin brass goose on my roof?” the other asked.
“Oh, no,” the Northwest Wind laughed, first to one and then to the other, “if I ever blow loose your tin brass goat and if I ever blow loose your tin brass goose, it will be when I am sorry for you because you are up against hard luck and there is somebody’s funeral.”
So time passed on and the two skyscrapers stood with their feet among the policemen and the taxicabs, the people buying and selling,—the customers with parcels, packages and bundles—while away high on their roofs stood the goat and the goose looking out on silver blue lakes like blue porcelain breakfast plates and silver snakes of rivers winding in the morning sun.
So time passed on and the Northwest Wind kept coming, telling the news and making promises.
So time passed on. And the two skyscrapers decided to have a child.
And they decided when their child came it should be a free child.
“It must be a free child,” they said to each other. “It must not be a child standing still all its life on a street corner. Yes, if we have a child she must be free to run across the prairie, to the mountains, to the sea. Yes, it must be a free child.”
So time passed on. Their child came. It was a railroad train, the Golden Spike Limited, the fastest long distance train in the Rootabaga Country. It ran across the prairie, to the mountains, to the sea.
They were glad, the two skyscrapers were, glad to have a free child running away from the big city, far away to the mountains, far away to the sea, running as far as the farthest mountains and sea coasts touched by the Northwest Wind.
They were glad their child was useful, the 138 two skyscrapers were, glad their child was carrying a thousand people a thousand miles a day, so when people spoke of the Golden Spike Limited, they spoke of it as a strong, lovely child.
Then time passed on. There came a day when the newsies yelled as though they were crazy. “Yah yah, blah blah, yoh yoh,” was what it sounded like to the two skyscrapers who never bothered much about what the newsies were yelling.
“Yah yah, blah blah, yoh yoh,” was the cry of the newsies that came up again to the tops of the skyscrapers.
At last the yelling of the newsies came so strong the skyscrapers listened and heard the newsies yammering, “All about the great train wreck! All about the Golden Spike disaster! Many lives lost! Many lives lost!”
And the Northwest Wind came howling a slow sad song. And late that afternoon a crowd of policemen, taxicab drivers, newsies and 139 customers with bundles, all stood around talking and wondering about two things next to each other on the street car track in the middle of the street. One was a tin brass goat. The other was a tin brass goose. And they lay next to each other.
— The Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg
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The Day Book
500 S. Peoria, Chicago
When he first moved to Chicago, Sandburg got a reporting job at the socialist newspaper Chicago Evening World, but it soon went belly up. He then took a job at the The Day Book, an experimental newspaper that got its revenue from selling papers rather than advertisements, which owner E.W. Scripps hoped would lead to greater editorial independence. Sandburg reported on crime, labor issues, and city politics for a salary of $25 a week.
Sandburg enjoyed the freedom at The Day Book and admired his editor, Negley D. Cochran. “I always count you a rich uncle who was good to me and for me,” Sandburg wrote to Cochran in 1921. Sandburg’s tenure with The Day Book lasted on and off for five years, as he would occasionally leave the paper for more lucrative jobs with industrial or trade publications.
Sandburg enjoyed the freedom at The Day Book and admired his editor, Negley D. Cochran. “I always count you a rich uncle who was good to me and for me,” Sandburg wrote to Cochran in 1921. Sandburg’s tenure with The Day Book lasted on and off for five years, as he would occasionally leave the paper for more lucrative jobs with industrial or trade publications.
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"I have been working with The Day Book. It’s a Scripps paper, takes no advertising, and therefore tells the truth. Chicago, however, is unfamiliar with the truth, can not recognize it when it appears, so the paper is having a steady quiet growth and seems to have large destinies ahead."
—Excerpt from a letter to William Leiserson, Feb. 8, 1913
—Excerpt from a letter to William Leiserson, Feb. 8, 1913
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System:
The Magazine of Business
The Magazine of Business
5 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago
Sandburg liked The Day Book but the pay was low, so in March of 1913 he left the paper for a job at System: A Magazine of Business, which offered him a larger salary of $35 a week. Sandburg needed the money to support his family, but as a confirmed socialist, he was embarrassed to write for an overtly capitalist newspaper. When writing about unsafe conditions in factories, Sandburg used his own name, but for a series of articles about the high cost of governmental programs, he used a pseudonym, W.C. Colson. Despite his embarrassment of the situation, Sandburg encouraged his friend and fellow writer Reuben Borough to apply for a job at System. The magazine was later purchased and merged with other newspaper magazines to eventually create Bloomberg Businessweek.
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"You might say at first shot that this is the hell of a place for a poet, but the truth is it is a good place for a poet to get his head knocked when he needs it. In fact, it is so good a place for a healthy man who wants to watch the biggest, most intense, brutal and complicated game in the world — the game by which the world gets fed and clothed — the method of control — the economics and waste — so good a place is it from this viewpoint that I think you will like it."
—Private Letter to Reuben Borough, July 20th, 1913
—Private Letter to Reuben Borough, July 20th, 1913
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Chicago Daily News
15 N. Wells St., Chicago
Despite Sandburg’s accomplishments as a poet, he still needed a day job. After writing for several second-tier papers for years, he finally landed a job with a major paper, the Chicago Daily News, in 1917.
The Chicago Daily News had its offices on “Newspaper Row” on Wells Street, and its editor, Victor Lawson, was known for supporting promising writers like Sandburg and Sherwood Anderson.
In the late 1910s, the newspaper assigned Sandburg as a film critic. It was a relatively easy job, but one he took seriously, injecting real literary criticism into a medium considered by many to be lowbrow entertainment.
The Chicago Daily News had its offices on “Newspaper Row” on Wells Street, and its editor, Victor Lawson, was known for supporting promising writers like Sandburg and Sherwood Anderson.
In the late 1910s, the newspaper assigned Sandburg as a film critic. It was a relatively easy job, but one he took seriously, injecting real literary criticism into a medium considered by many to be lowbrow entertainment.
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"The most important and most original photoplay that has come to this city of Chicago the last year is being presented at the Ziegfield Theater this week in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. That is exactly the way some people say it.
The craziest, wildest, shivery movie that has come wriggling across the silver sheet of a cinema house. That is the way other people look at it.
It looks like a collaboration of Rube Goldberg, Ben Hecht, Charlie Chaplin, and Edgar Allen Poe — a melting pot of the styles and techniques of all four.
It is a healthy thing for Hollywood, Culver City, Universal City, and all other places where movie film is being produced that this photoplay has come along at this time. It is sure to have healthy hunches and show new possibilities in style and method to our American producers…
There are two murders. They are the creepiest murders this observer has thus far noted in photoplays. Yet the killings are only suggested. They are not told and acted out fully. (No censor could complain in this respect.) As murders, they remind one of the darker pages of Shakespeare, of Hamlet, Macbeth,and again of the De Quincey essay on 'Murder as a Fine Art.'"
—Excerpt from Review of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Tuesday May 21, 1921
The craziest, wildest, shivery movie that has come wriggling across the silver sheet of a cinema house. That is the way other people look at it.
It looks like a collaboration of Rube Goldberg, Ben Hecht, Charlie Chaplin, and Edgar Allen Poe — a melting pot of the styles and techniques of all four.
It is a healthy thing for Hollywood, Culver City, Universal City, and all other places where movie film is being produced that this photoplay has come along at this time. It is sure to have healthy hunches and show new possibilities in style and method to our American producers…
There are two murders. They are the creepiest murders this observer has thus far noted in photoplays. Yet the killings are only suggested. They are not told and acted out fully. (No censor could complain in this respect.) As murders, they remind one of the darker pages of Shakespeare, of Hamlet, Macbeth,and again of the De Quincey essay on 'Murder as a Fine Art.'"
—Excerpt from Review of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Tuesday May 21, 1921
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The streets
Several of Sandburg’s Chicago Poems — such as “Fish Crier,” “Sketch,” “The Harbor,” “Passers-by,” “Clark Street Bridge,” and “Halsted Street Car” — seem to have been inspired by Sandburg’s walks around the city. Literary scholar Paul Durica says Sandburg had an ability to find “kindness and beauty and virtue in certain parts of the city that many others would regard as ugly. And in places we regard as sacred realms of learning and culture, a true ugliness can emerge.”
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Halsted Street Car
Come you, cartoonists,Hang on a strap with me here
At seven o'clock in the morning
On a Halsted street car.
Take your pencils
And draw these faces.
Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,
That pig-sticker in one corner — his mouth —
That overall factory girl — her loose cheeks.
Find for your pencils
A way to mark your memory
Of tired empty faces.
After their night's sleep,
In the moist dawn
And cool daybreak,
Faces
Tired of wishes,
Empty of dreams.
—Carl Sandburg, 1916
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The harbors
Monroe Harbor
During his lunch breaks, Sandburg was drawn to the shores of Lake Michigan, especially Monroe Harbor just across Grant Park, which was near many of his newspaper office jobs. He wrote about how the lakefront changes character and mood depending on the weather and wind. According to literary scholar Paul Durica, Sandburg always looked for details that revealed the dualities and contradictions of Chicago. Durica says Sandburg might portray the harbors as quiet and mysterious in poems like “The Fog” or “Lost,” or as turbulent and teeming with nature in poems like “The Harbor.”
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The Harbor
Passing through huddled and ugly walls,By doorways where women haggard
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
Out from the huddled and ugly walls,
I came sudden, at the city's edge,
On a blue burst of lake,
Long lake waves breaking under the sun
On a spray-flung curve of shore;
And a fluttering storm of gulls,
Masses of great gray wings
And flying white bellies
Veering and wheeling free in the open.
—Carl Sandburg, 1914
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The Black Belt
South Side
After World War II, Sandburg wrote a series of news stories about overcrowding and other problems in Chicago’s Black Belt, an area of the South Side where African-Americans were allowed to settle in Chicago. In 1919, the Black Belt had grown to include most of the neighborhoods east of State Street, north of 43rd street, and south of 16th street.
Sandburg reported on lynchings in the South, African-American migration, and the lack of housing and job opportunities. He spoke to community leaders, policemen, government officials, and labor leaders, and spent time walking through the Black Belt and talking to people he encountered. Journalist Cameron McWhirter credits Sandburg for predicting the 1919 Chicago race riots: “He is a white guy walking around a black neighborhood, talking about problems facing the African-American community; and [no white reporter] was really doing that at that time.”
Sandburg reported on lynchings in the South, African-American migration, and the lack of housing and job opportunities. He spoke to community leaders, policemen, government officials, and labor leaders, and spent time walking through the Black Belt and talking to people he encountered. Journalist Cameron McWhirter credits Sandburg for predicting the 1919 Chicago race riots: “He is a white guy walking around a black neighborhood, talking about problems facing the African-American community; and [no white reporter] was really doing that at that time.”
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In barber shop windows and in cigar stores and haberdasheries are helmets, rifles, cartridges, canteens, and haversacks and photographs of negro regiments that were sent to France… [T]alk with the black folk and leaders of the black folk. Ask them, ‘What about the future of the colored people?” The reply that comes most often and the thought that seems uppermost is: ‘We made the supreme sacrifice; they didn’t need any work or fight law for us; our record, like Old Glory, the flag we love because it stands for our freedom, hasn’t got a spot on it; we ‘come clean’; now we want to see our country live up to the constitution and the declaration of independence.
—Excerpt of The Chicago Race Riots, 1919
—Excerpt of The Chicago Race Riots, 1919
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Poetry Magazine
543 Cass Street (Now N. Wabash)
In 1914, Sandburg had unsuccessfully tried to publish a collection of poems about Chicago in several magazines. His wife, Paula, took it upon herself to send the poems to Poetry Magazine, a new literary magazine in the Midwest that published the work of contemporary poets, like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Founder and fellow poet Harriet Monroe found Sandburg’s harsh descriptions of Chicago shocking, but associate editors Alice Corbin Henderson, and Eunice Tietjens convinced her to publish the poems. These included the iconic poem “Chicago,” which coined the city’s nickname, “City of the Big Shoulders.”
The offices of Poetry Magazine occupied a renovated “mansion” on Cass Street just north of the Loop, and many of the original employees were women. Monroe encouraged poets who were visiting Chicago like, Edgar Lee Masters and William Carlos Williams, to visit and socialize, read poems, and enjoy snacks and coffee. According to scholar Helen Carr, Monroe made coffee over an open fire in a nearby alleyway. Sandburg frequently stopped by the offices to chat with the editors or visiting poets.
The offices of Poetry Magazine occupied a renovated “mansion” on Cass Street just north of the Loop, and many of the original employees were women. Monroe encouraged poets who were visiting Chicago like, Edgar Lee Masters and William Carlos Williams, to visit and socialize, read poems, and enjoy snacks and coffee. According to scholar Helen Carr, Monroe made coffee over an open fire in a nearby alleyway. Sandburg frequently stopped by the offices to chat with the editors or visiting poets.
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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,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
—Carl Sandburg, 1914
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The Dill Pickle Club
10 Tooker Place, Chicago
The Dill Pickle Club was a favorite gathering place for artists, political activists, and writers like Sandburg. Patrons had to enter through a nondescript alley. Once inside, the narrow interior held a hall with mismatched chairs and tables — all painted blue — and a small stage with a podium for readings and debates.
The club was run by a man writer Sherwood Anderson called “the father, the mother, and the ringmaster of the Dill Pickle,” Jack Jones. The club served tea and what one local guidebook described as “passable fair.”According to scholar Paul Durica: “If Carl Sandburg was hanging out there one evening, he might hear a University of Chicago professor lecture; the next night, Mae West might be performing a scene from her subtly titled play Sex.”
Sandburg occasionally performed his poems at the Dill Pickle, and according to his contemporaries, he would bring a guitar and sing traditional American folk songs during his poetry readings.
The club was run by a man writer Sherwood Anderson called “the father, the mother, and the ringmaster of the Dill Pickle,” Jack Jones. The club served tea and what one local guidebook described as “passable fair.”According to scholar Paul Durica: “If Carl Sandburg was hanging out there one evening, he might hear a University of Chicago professor lecture; the next night, Mae West might be performing a scene from her subtly titled play Sex.”
Sandburg occasionally performed his poems at the Dill Pickle, and according to his contemporaries, he would bring a guitar and sing traditional American folk songs during his poetry readings.
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The Boll Weevil (Traditional song often performed by Carl Sandburg)
Listen to Sandburg sing
Oh, de boll weevil am a little black bug,
Come from Mexico, dey say,
Come all de way to Texas, jus' a-lookin' foh a place to stay,
Jus' a-lookin' foh a home, jus' a-lookin' foh a home.
De first time I seen de boll weevil,
He was a-settin' on de square.
De next time I seen de boll weevil, he had all of his family dere.
Jus' a-lookin' foh a home, jus' a-lookin' foh a home.
De farmer say to de weevil:
"What make yo' head so red?"
De weevil say to de farmer, “It's a wondah I ain't dead,
A-lookin' foh a home, jus' a-lookin' foh a home."
De farmer take de boll weevil,
An' he put him in de hot san
De weevil say: "Dis is mighty hot, but I'll stan' it like a man,
It is my home, this will be my home."
De farmer take de boll weevil,
An' he put him in a lump of ice;
De boll weevil say to de farmer: "Dis is mighty cool and nice,
It'll be my home, dis'll be my home."
De farmer take de boll weevil,
An' he put him in de fire.
De boll weevil say to de farmer: "Here I are, here I are,
Dis'll be my home, dis'll be my home."
De boll weevil say to de farmer:
"You better leave me alone;
I done eat all yo' cotton, and now I'm goin' to start on yo' corn,
I'll have a home, I'll have a home."
De merchant got half de cotton,
De boll weevil got de res'.
Didn't leave de farmer's wife but one old cotton dress,
An' it's full of holes, it's full of holes.
De farmer say to de merchant:
"We ain't made but only one bale,
And befoh we'll give yo' dat one we'll fight and go to jail,
We'll have a home, we'll have a home."
De farmer say to de merchant:
"We's in an awful fix;
De boll weevil et all de cotton up an lef ' us only sticks,
We's got no home, we's got no home."
And de cap'n say to de missus:
"What d' you t'ink o' dat?
De boll weevil done make a nes' in my bes' Sunday hat,
Goin' to have a home, goin' to have a home."
An' if anybody should ax you
Who it was dat make dis song,
Jus' tell 'em 'twas a big buck niggah wid a paih o' blue duckin's on.
Am' got no home, ain' got no home.
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