He considered himself as a ""bo" because, as a youth, he longed to venture the world and sporadically jumped on a train for the Midwest. For two years he "rode the trains, worked odd jobs, and explored new places." He learned most of his songs from "miners, cowboys, farm hangs, gamblers, drinkers, jilted lovers, ex-convicts, railwaymen, and former slaves. When he would want to take a break from writing poetry; he would travel across the United States as an entertainer and lecturer. He would get out in front of everyone and demonstrate his appealing intelligence and sing "authentic songs people have sung for years." He didn't care if the people liked his music or not; he didn't even care if they stayed to listen to him. He told the audience one time "If you don't care for them and want to leave, it will be all right with me. I"ll be doing what I"d be doing if I were at home anyway." All of the songs that he would sing, he wrote down the lyrics music and published them all in a book called The American Songbag. (Jeffrey Hacker 6).
Carl Sandburg wrote in a style, free prose, which was considered different by most. His work was easily interpreted, but it was most easily interpreted by Sandburg himself. This style became popular in the 1920's. Often times, a person who was opposed to free prose would change their mind once they heard Sandburg's works (Lisa Lee 2). People could interpret his work but the best one who could do this was Sandburg himself. You could tell his writing from all others because in "his phrasings, his pauses, his subject matter, there is the clear mark of Carl Sandburg." Most of his early poetry was "rhymed and marked with traditional rhythms." The writers who Sandburg emulated and had an influence on him while he was attending Lombard College were Keats, Shelley and Browning (Lisa Lee 1). Some of Sandburg's other favorite writers were Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudyard Kipling, and Elbert Hubbard (Niven 1).
