Criticism > Poetry > Sandburg, Carl - John T. Frederick (review date 1916)

Sandburg, Carl - John T. Frederick (review date 1916)

John T. Frederick (review date 1916)

SOURCE: Frederick, John T. Review of Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg. Midland 2, no. 6 (June 1916): 189-93.

[In the following review, Frederick praises the “clearness and validity” of Sandburg's interpretation of early twentieth-century America in his Chicago Poems.]

When Poetry published a group of poems by Carl Sandburg, a few months ago, a friend remarked “Here is a real poet.” That judgment is verified by the recently published volume, Chicago Poems. The book lacks uniformity of purpose and achievement, and much of it is relatively trivial. But nevertheless it constitutes a permanent contribution to the literature of the Middle West and of America.

In its form Sandburg's work falls in the modern classes of imagism and free verse. In certain of the best poems of the book, such as “Chicago,” the manner of Whitman is suggested, perhaps as much by kinship of...

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