Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg

Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For Chicago Poems I guess I was expecting something more. The definition of this “City of Big Shoulders” and a mythology one could cling to, the way New Yorkers define themselves against the rest of the world.

Carl Sandburg was the namesake for the junior high school I attended, in a suburb of Chicago. There were two other middle schools in that suburb, one almost named after a famous English statesman (Winston Churchill; Churchville’s close, right?) and the other after… god knows whom (maybe William Jennings Bryan, the infamous lawyer in the Scopes Monkey Trial?). I just looked up my old school, and it’s got a website. Mrs. Beck is still teaching 7th grade social studies, but it looks like all the other names have changed. Mrs. Goodman, my favorite teacher ever, has passed on; I heard the news several years ago from a friend. It surprised me, but then again, our teachers–like ourselves–cannot live forever.

I had hoped she would see my success one day. That I could write and tell her I’d finally made it, the way she thought I would. Alas, I cannot.

So Carl, would you have written a poem for Mrs. G, beloved teacher and relentless source of enthusiastic encouragement? Keeper of so many secrets, the one who first foisted the art of journalling upon us? You wrote a poem for every dogsbody in Chicago, but what about us kids from the suburbs? Would you spare a dime for us?

This review appears courtesy of our partner site, Crack Books.