Carl Sandburg Research Paper

Carl Sandburg once said, “The people is a myth, an abstraction” (“Carl Sandburg”). Sandburg was an individual that questioned views on life and the people in society. Carl Sandburg is a very well known poet that has influenced thousands of individuals during and after his lifetime. Sandburg wrote The People, Yes in 1936. This collection of poems has defined and depicted many aspects of daily life for the American people during the 1930s. He gave the public his knowledge, wisdom, and hope while he led a simple and quiet life. Critics enjoy analyzing Sandburg’s work because he had so many insightful ideas during the literary era of Modernism. Carl Sandburg was a Pulitzer Prize winner and he is recognized for his well known and inspiring poem collection The People, …show more content…
When Carl Sandburg was thirteen he left school to seek work to help the family. He mainly worked odd jobs like washing dishes or physical labor (“Carl Sandburg”). As years passed, Sandburg left home and traveled aimlessly around the country trying to find work. This led him into the military where he served in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American war at the age of eighteen. He met a student that attended Lombard College while he was in Puerto Rico. After many conversations between the two of them, the young man persuaded Sandburg to enroll at Lombard after the war came to an end (“Carl Sandburg”). After Carl Sandburg finished serving in the war he attended Lombard College for four years. While attending Lombard, his poetry flourished. If these college conversations never occurred, it is likely that Carl Sandburg’s poetry would never have been discovered. Later on, he continued to receive honorary degrees from Lombard, Knox College, and Northwestern University (“Carl Sandburg”). He married his wife Lillian Steichen, whom he called Paula, and settled down in Milwaukee (“Carl Sandburg”). Sandburg’s career was still far from over. In 1919