Of all the poems written by Carl Sandburg, an early 20th-century poet of the Imagist school, "Fog" may be his most famous. This may seem surprising; it is a deceptively simple poem, only six lines long, with no real discernible meter or rhyme scheme. However, the meaning of this poem lies not only in the latent power of its imagery, but also in the innovative poetic tradition in which it participates and is part. was one of the first examples. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayCarl Sandburg composed "Fog" in 1916. World War I was raging and brought with it enormous consequences. social changes, the repercussions of which we still feel today. In literature, and in poetry in particular, the austerities of war and the harshness of the reality that people all over the world were forced to face, for the first time, determined a completely style new. Literary works composed in this period became sharper, less romantic, more realistic - and no genre showed this change more noticeably than poetry. Carl Sandburg was clearly writing within this tradition; in a review of his work, one critic states that it "has the unassailable, immovable earth-bound strength of a great granite rock displaying a weather-worn surface above the ground."[1] This particular tendency of strong, concrete, reality-bound literary works manifested itself specifically in the Imagist movement. A subset of the modernist trend of the early 1900s, the Imagist movement was centered on the use of images as a primary force in poetry; writers of the Imagist school focused on creating strong, realistic images, which they let be the center of their poems. Sandburg's reviewer talks about the compelling way in which Sandburg has participated in this trend, saying, "This is a speech torn from the heart because of the beauty of..., a fog that arrives 'on little cat's feet' - the incommunicable beauty of the earth, of life - is too passionate to be borne.”[2] Imagist poets sought to access the deepest realities by presenting, with clarity and force, but without subtext, true images drawn from real life; their peculiar power. Carl Sandburg manifests this tendency in a particularly clear and convincing way in “Fog.” Carl Sandberg wrote primarily in free verse, meaning that most of his poems flowed freely without a metrical character or pattern. clearly distinguishable rhymes, and “Fog” is no exception. The metrical feet follow a seemingly random pattern and none of the lines rhyme. Its brevity, well-constructed lines and overall conciseness almost suggest a Japanese haiku. There is a legend that Sandburg wrote the poem while waiting for a friend in a Chicago park; he had a book of haiku with him and decided to try writing one himself, which he eventually developed into "Fog". Whether this story is true or not, it is certainly undeniable that this free verse piece bears some resemblance to the clean, concise lines of Japanese haiku. This method of constructing a poem gives it a particular strength; the reader is more attentive than they would be if they were simply reading a paragraph of prose, yet the naturalism of the word choices and the lack of rhyme give a realistic quality to the piece. This emphasis on realism, again, is a quality of the modernist movement, in which Carl Sandburg wrote, as an imagist poet. The imagery in this poem is particularly unique, as it relies on a single metaphor to give it a center.