"Una silenziosa litania operaia". L'America di Carl Sandburg

This paper aims to examine Carl Sandburg’s unusual trajectory from militant poet and socialist propagandist to standard-bearer for the American values of unity, freedom and progress. If in his first book, Chicago Poems, the author harshly criticized the American lifestyle and the capitalist system, over the years we witness a gradual transformation which mitigates Sandburg’s controversial positions, until he became an embodiment of the founding ideals of the nation and a symbol of the American Dream.