Of all the poems written by Carl Sandburg, an early 20th century poet of the Imagist school, "Fog" is perhaps his most famous. This may seem surprising It is a deceptively simple poem, of only six lines, with no real rhythm or discernible rhyme scheme. However, the importance of this poem lies not only in the latent power of its imagery, but also in the. revolutionary poetic tradition in which he participates and of which he was one of the first examples.Say no to plagiarismGet a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essayCarl Sandburg composed. “Fog” in 1916. The First World War was raging and bringing massive 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 reality. which people around the world were forced to face, for the first time, gave birth to an entirely new style. Literary works composed during this time became sharper, less romantic, more realistic – and no genre showed this change more obviously than the poem. Carl Sandburg clearly wrote in this tradition; in a review of his work, one critic states that it "possesses the unassailable, unshakable earthly force of a great granite boulder which shows a weather-worn surface above the ground." » [1] This particular tendency toward strong, concrete reality-related literary works manifested itself specifically in the Imagist movement. A subset of the modernist trend of the early 1900s, the Imagist movement centered on the use of imagery 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 critic speaks of the convincing way in which Sandburg participated in this trend, saying: "It is a speech torn from the heart because of the beauty of..., a fog coming 'on the little cat's paws ' - the incommunicable beauty of the earth. , of life - is too vivid to bear. »[2] Imagist poets attempted to access the deepest realities by presenting, with clarity and force, but without subtext, true images taken from real life; therein lies their special power. Carl Sandburg manifests this tendency in a particularly clear and convincing way in “Fog”. Carl Sandberg wrote primarily in free verse, meaning that the majority of his poems flowed freely without a clearly discernible metrical character or rhyme scheme, and "Fog" is no exception. The metrical feet fall in what appears to be a random pattern, and none of the lines rhyme. Its brevity, well-constructed lines and general conciseness are almost reminiscent of 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 haikus with him and decided to try his hand at writing one himself, which he eventually expanded into "Fog". Whether this story is true or not, it is certainly undeniable that this tight free verse piece bears some similarities to the clear, concise lines of Japanese haiku. This method of constructing a poem gives it a particular strength; the reader is more attentive than he or she would have been if he were simply reading a paragraph of prose, and yet the naturalism of the word choice and the absence of rhyme give the piece a realistic character. This emphasis on realism is, once again, a quality of the modernist movement in.