It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report.

Explore from WBEZ.

The fog comes on little cat feet.

It sits looking over city and harbor on silent haunches and then moves on.

That voice is Carl Sandberg, reading a famous poem he wrote one morning in Chicago from a bench in Grant Park.

I'm Jesse Dukes, and Sandberg is the subject of a question from Ryan Sowers.

Ryan wants to know where did Carl Sandberg live and work in Chicago?

Before I started working on this question, all I knew about Carl Sandberg was he called Chicago

the city of the big shoulders. But it turns out that Sandberg's relationship with Chicago

goes way beyond that nickname. The events he witnessed here, the people he met,

and the places he encountered helped shape his writing and launch his literary career. And his

relationship with the city would continue to influence him throughout his life. Samberg wasn't

just a major American poet. He was also a journalist, political radical, Abraham

Lincoln biographer and folk singer. And I have to say, learning about him has been pretty

amazing. Some of the things he wrote about Chicago a century ago seemed like they could have been

written today. He wrote about corruption, racism, inequality, and violence. But he also loved the hubbub of the city and its people.

So, to answer Ryan's question, we'll hear how Sandberg drew inspiration from the city

streets he wandered, the newspapers where he worked, and the homes where he spent time with

his family.

His Chicago story begins in 1912.

He was a struggling writer, a new father, and an aspiring poet.

And I'll let literary scholars Paul Durrika and Liesel Olson

...