Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio

Carl Sandburg is an internationally known writer(Barr). Sandburg is mainly known for his poems “Chicago”. They first appeared in a nationally circulated poetry magazine(Barr). All of his Chicago poems were made into a book two years later. Carl Sandburg was Galesburg, Illinois and then later moved to Chicago(EDSITEment). Sandburg also referred to the windy city as “City of the Big Shoulders” (EDSITEment). Chicago was the industrial city of the time.

After eight grade graduation Carl Sandburg never returned to school(Barr). Although he began many life experiences. After he left school he bounce around job to job. Sandburg had delivered milk, laid bricks, work on a wheat farm, hotel servant, and many others(Barr). He began to open his eyes to how many different types of people lived. He witnessed the difference of the wealthy and poor.

Sandburg’s poem “Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio” is related to many of his other works, but mainly everything is focused back onto the Chicago poems. In relation with modernism poetry Sandburg shows how they were having a good life and then life began to turn and they end up weeping(Barr). This has to do with the time, being during the depression. It talks about how life was prospering before the war and then “I got the blues. I got the blues. I got the blues.” (Sandburg). Sandburg states in his poem that life began to decline. Which lead to “The cartoonists weep in the beer”.(Sandburg)

Modernism themes may entail loneliness or an unsure future(Some Characteristics). With the depression just begging no one is sure of their job or what the future may hold. “It’s a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes”(Sandburg) In this statement it makes it seem as life and everything around them is being to crumble like a cookie.