Carl Sandburg was unique compare to many other poets. All of the poems that he wrote were short and straight to the point. You would not find any poems that he had written that are over a page, yet still; his poems are very easy to understand. Sandburg lived through a lot of historic events, so all of his poems were about those historic events.
As you know, history isn’t always exciting or easy to learn. Yet, Sandburg was able to write about those times in a way that an average high school student can understand, unlike other poets like Emily Dickinson or Edgar Allen Poe. Carl Sandburg should be included in an anthology of American poetry because of his writing technique and experience.
Sandburg used a lot of the generalization methods to make his poems simpler to understand. Even though we know that sometimes-generalizing things are not good, Sandburg did a great job of it and was still able to write out everything he wanted to. Like I said, Carl Sandburg lived through some of the most famous historic events in the United States of all time. He had seen events like World War I, the roaring 1920s, the Depression, World War II, the New Deal, and the Cold War.
The anthology of American poetry needs more poets with his kind of experience. I’ll bet you that he never had trouble trying to figure out what to write about. The poem I chose by Carl Sandburg was a poem called JAWS. It’s a poem about World War I, and it talks about how the countries that were involved in the war had a chance to prevent war, but they ignored it. This poem should be included as an example of the poets’ work because it’s saying what we think and feel. When we learn about how World War I was started, we would be thinking don’t these countries realize what they’re getting themselves into and don’t they have consciences.
The poem JAWS talks about all these things so we can relate to it. Another reason why I think this poem should be included as an example of the poets’ work is because it’s short and straight to the point. If you were to give a high school student a choice of either reading a page long poem or a paragraph long poem, most chances are that student will pick the paragraph long one. And just because the poem JAWS is short doesn’t mean it’s not well written or incomplete with information. It has enough information for that certain type of poem and probably even an elementary student can understand it. This poem can be included in the canon because it’s about history and history is being taught on for all generations. It also should be included in the canon because not many poems in the canon are as short yet still contains so much information.
