Chicago Poems
Chicago Poems is a 1916 collection of poetry by Carl Sandburg, his first by a mainstream publisher.
Inspiration, publication, and reception
Sandburg moved to Chicago in 1912 after living in Milwaukee, where he had served as secretary to Emil Seidel, Milwaukee's Socialist mayor. Harriet Monroe, a fellow resident of Chicago, had recently founded the magazine Poetry at around this time. Monroe liked and encouraged Sandburg's plain-speaking free verse style, strongly reminiscent of Walt Whitman.Sandburg sent his manuscript to Alfred Harcourt, then a junior-ranking editor at Henry [Holt and Company|Henry Holt]. Facing opposition from above, Harcourt removed and censored—with Sandburg's co-operation—the harsher poems. For example, the direct criticism of "Billy Sunday" by name, previously published in The Masses and International [Socialist Review |International Socialist Review], was replaced with the more tepid and anonymous "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter".
Chicago Poems established Sandburg as a major figure in contemporary literature. Chicago Poems, and its follow-up volumes of verse, Cornhuskers and Smoke and Steel represent Sandburg's attempts to found an American version of social realism, writing expansive verse in praise of American agriculture and industry.