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Among the newer and younger western poets, Carl Sandburg has attracted much attention. His verse has virility, force, clarity, and music. The poem here given won a prize of two hundred dollars offered under the auspices of "Poetry," a magazine published in Chicago. It illustrates all the qualities mentioned above. His present home is in Maywood, Illinois, but he lived for some years in Milwaukee, and married a Milwaukee girl, Lillian Steichen. He was connected with the Milwaukee Leader, and was secretary to Mayor Seidel. His political ideas are frequently reflected in his poems.
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have
seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring
the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked, and I answer: Yes, it is
true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill
again.
And they tell me you are brutal, and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks of
wanton hunger.
And having answered so, I turn once more to those who sneer
at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and
say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so
proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
here is a tall, bold slugger set vivid against the little
soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a
savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking,
rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white
teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man
laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never
lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and
under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-
naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool
Maker,
Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads, and Freight
Handler to the Nation.