SOURCE: Review of Chicago Poems, by Carl Sandburg. Virginia Quarterly Review 68, no. 3 (summer 1992): 102.

In the following review of the reissued Chicago Poems, the unsigned critic draws attention to the work's ambivalent status near the end of the twentieth century.

This reissue of Sandburg's first book of poems, originally published in 1914, includes the much-anthologized “Chicago” (which labeled the city as the “Hog Butcher for the World”) and “Fog” (which moved on famously feline paws). As John E. Hallwas points out in his evenhanded introduction, all of Sandburg's strengths and weaknesses are clearly displayed in this book, arguably the strongest one he ever wrote. Chicago Poems is particularly interesting to read in 1992, when free verse rather than rhymed and metered poems dominate the literary journals. Indeed, though these poems were once considered bold for their “powerful free verse,” many of them could appear in a contemporary poetry publication without drawing...