I saw a famous man eating soup.
 I say he was lifting a fat broth
 Into his mouth with a spoon.
 His name was in the newspapers that day
 Spelled out in tall black headlines
 And thousands of people were talking about him.

     When I saw him,
 He sat bending his head over a plate
 Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon.

A nice little vignette that makes a simple point, but makes it well: even the rich and famous are like you and I¹.

Sandburg’s unadorned, unpretentious style lends itself well to snippets like this. Today’s poem does not have the rollicking energy, the sweeping syllables of “Chicago”. Nor does it have the subtle beauty, the delicate imagery of “Crucible” and “Pennsylvania”. But it does not need either of these to succeed. Instead, the impact of “Soup” is in all the little touches, the splashes of detail, in phrases such as ‘tall black headlines’ and ‘bending his head over a plate’. Skilfully done.

— Thomas

“Yes, they have more money.” – Ernest Hemingway.

Links

While Sandburg’s passionate unstructured verse may have invigorated American poetry when it was first published in the early years of this century, in recent years it has fallen out of favour with critics due to its seeming lack of discipline. Read http://www.poetscanvas.org/jan_feb_mar/sandburg.htm for more on this subject.

Poems by Sandburg on the Minstrels:
Poem #5, Chicago
Poem #163, Dust
Poem #205, Crucible
Poem #235, Pennsylvania
Poem #282, Fog
Poem #679, Maybe
Poem #713, Last Answers
The second and third of these have biographies, from EB and poets.org respectively.