Edward Steichen

Born to poor Swedish immigrants in Galesburg, IL, in 1878, Carl August Sandburg would grow up to become the premier poet of the Midwest and a champion of the American folksong. He left school at 13 to become a day laborer and later served in the Spanish-American War. After returning to Galesburg, he continued his education at Lombard College and by 1902 received his first newspaper position in Milwaukee. In 1908 he married Lilian Steichen, sister of photographer Edward Steichen, whom he would remain with for the rest of his life. He worked for a short time as a secretary to Socialist Mayor Emil Seidel (1910-1912) and continued his newspaper career in 1917 at the Chicago Daily News. It was his poetry, however, that brought him to national attention in the mid-teens. Both Chicago Poems in 1916 and Cornhuskers in 1918 displayed Sandburg's penchant for the rhythm and conversational mode of American speech.