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.