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Biography of Carl Sandburg 1878-1967

Biographical Sketch by Karen Glass

American poet Carl Sandburg has a number of schools around the country named after him. He once went to visit a high school bearing his name in Orland Park, Illinois, and the principal thought he was a hobo who had intruded on the school grounds. That's because Carl Sandburg was an incredibly humble and unpretentious man who believed he was simply part of the great people of the United States. He said once, "I'll probably die propped up in bed trying to write a poem about America."

In many ways, Carl Sandburg embodied the American spirit. His parents were immigrants from Sweden who could not read or write in English. Carl, called "Charlie" by his family, was one of seven children. Born near Chicago in 1878, he grew up in a poor working-class home and received the typical "8th grade education" of the time. After finishing, he joined the work force at just thirteen years of age, and helped support his family for several years.

While still a teenager, he began the traveling life of a hobo. During his traveling years, he met a cross section of Americans who taught him many American folk songs which he remembered and then sang and performed in later years. After a brief stint as a soldier during the Spanish American War, he decided to continue his formal education. He went to Lombard College in Illinois for a few years, and although he never earned a degree, he found his calling.

He channelled his interest in people and music into writing, and he became a journalist and a poet. He identified strongly with the people of America as a whole, and with his poetry he tried to find beauty even in the industrialism that dominated their lives. He wrote poems about things like telegraph wires, factories, and harbors in a free-verse style that was uniquely American. In his book Good Morning, America, he offered 38 definitions of poetry, and none of them include rhyming. He wrote,"Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes," and "Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."

However, while trying to find beauty in the world, he was also aware that working conditions were hard and life was difficult. As a journalist he wrote about social issues, including racial tensions and child labor, because he wanted to make life in America better for everyone. His columns about racial tension were published as The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919.

Carl Sandburg had a particular fascination with another poor boy from Illinois who worked hard and rose to fame, Abraham Lincoln. He studied and collected material on Lincoln, which eventually became a six-volume history of Lincoln's life, which won Sandburg a Pulitzer Prize in 1941. Nearly ten years later, he also won a second Pulitzer for his Complete Poems.

In addition to being a Lincoln scholar, a poet, and a performer (reading his own poetry and singing folk songs), Sandburg was a children's author. He thought American children should have American folk tales, not just European stories about princesses and knights, so he wrote several books for children, including Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons.

Carl Sandburg died in 1967, at the age of 89. His ashes are buried by a granite boulder called "Remembrance Rock" near his childhood home in Galesburg, Illinois.