Chicago

I have a friend visiting Chicago at the moment, and for reasons I cannot explain, I somehow got imprinted with the phrase "Chicago! Hog butcher for the world!" when we got Carl Sandburg in American Lit in high school. So I just searched up the poem --- God bless the web --- and it is pretty damned good.

Chicago

    Hog Butcher for the World,
    Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
    Player with Railroads and
      the Nation’s Freight Handler;
    Stormy, husky, brawling,
    City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;



Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
    Bareheaded,
    Shoveling,
    Wrecking,
    Planning,
    Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth,
 laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing
 as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs
 who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist
 is the pulse. and under his ribs
 the heart of the people,
        Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

People do not write poems like that about suburbs.