Conrad

Chicago

Chicago is as poem that captures how the cities of America are in that time

period. He addresses the city as "you", as if it were a living person and all of the people

that make things happen in the city are the organs of that person. The poem has a positive

outlook on the city of Chicago. It details the flaws and shortcomings of the city. He talks

of painted women on the streets luring the farm boys, which would be women with

make-up applied heavily working the streets. He says that they tell him the city is brutal,

crooked, and wicked

and that he believes them. The poem also translates into how living in the city is toilsome

and that the city is unrelenting. On the other hand it shows how the city can be

prosperous and happy with the city's disadvantages. in the second half of the poem it's

telling how nomatter what is wrong with the city, the people are still proud of who they

are.

The theme of "Chicago" is how life in the city really is. The Academy of American

Poets states that "Chicago is written so that the average working man can read it and

think about his surroundings rather than to become a robot from the repetitious stress

consuming him" The Carl Sandburg page says that, Oliver Wendle Holmes, a skilled

rhymester, told a young poet: "When you write in prose you say what you mean, when

you write in verse you say what you must" . In "Chicago" as well as all of Sandburg's

literature he writes what he has to write because he was once one of the workers and he

realizes their needs of having something different in their everyday lives. In "The People,

Yes" Lewis Gannett states that Sandburg is "The voice of America as no other American

poem since Walt Whitman".

The poem "Chicago" relates directly to Carl Sandburg's personal life. He has been

in the spot in which many of the people at that time were in, so he can understand how,

why, and what the average city man is thinking. By using this perception he is able to

enter their minds through his simple Free Verse.