Chicago

===Literature===
{{Further|Chicago literature}}
[[File:Carl Sandburg NYWTS.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Carl Sandburg]]'s most famous description of the city is as "Hog Butcher for the World / Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat / Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, / Stormy, Husky, Brawling, City of the Big Shoulders."]]

Chicago literature finds its roots in the city's tradition of lucid, direct journalism, lending to a strong tradition of [[social realism]]. In the ''[[Encyclopedia of Chicago]]'', [[Northwestern University]] Professor Bill Savage describes Chicago fiction as prose which tries to "capture the essence of the city, its spaces and its people." The challenge for early writers was that Chicago was a frontier outpost that transformed into a global metropolis in the span of two generations. Narrative fiction of that time, much of it in the style of "high-flown romance" and "genteel realism", needed a new approach to describe the urban social, political, and economic conditions of Chicago.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/448.html |title=Fiction |work=chicagohistory.org |access-date=August 9, 2012 |archive-date=January 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118043823/http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/448.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Nonetheless, Chicagoans worked hard to create a literary tradition that would stand the test of time,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/755.html |title=Literary Cultures |work=chicagohistory.org |access-date=August 9, 2012 |archive-date=October 11, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221011210402/http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/755.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and create a "city of feeling" out of concrete, steel, vast lake, and open prairie.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1390.html |title=Literary Images of Chicago |work=chicagohistory.org |access-date=August 9, 2012 |archive-date=October 8, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221008200636/http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1390.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Much notable Chicago fiction focuses on the city itself, with social criticism keeping exultation in check.

At least three short periods in the [[history of Chicago]] have had a lasting influence on [[American literature]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/257.html |title=Chicago Literary Renaissance |work=chicagohistory.org |access-date=August 9, 2012 |archive-date=September 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220921183952/http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/257.html |url-status=live }}</ref> These include from the time of the Great Chicago Fire to about 1900, what became known as the Chicago Literary Renaissance in the 1910s and early 1920s, and the period of the [[Great Depression]] through the 1940s.

What would become the influential ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'' magazine was founded in 1912 by [[Harriet Monroe]], who was working as an [[art]] [[critic]] for the ''Chicago Tribune''. The magazine discovered such poets as [[Gwendolyn Brooks]], [[James Merrill]], and [[John Ashbery]].<ref name="ny">Goodyear, Dana, [https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_goodyear "The Moneyed Muse: What can two hundred million dollars do for poetry?"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140630105939/http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/070219fa_fact_goodyear |date=June 30, 2014 }}, article, ''[[The New Yorker]]'', February 19 and 26 double issue, 2007</ref> [[T.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;Eliot]]'s first professionally published poem, "[[The Love Song of J.&nbsp;Alfred Prufrock]]", was first published by ''Poetry''. Contributors have included [[Ezra Pound]], [[William Butler Yeats]], [[William Carlos Williams]], [[Langston Hughes]], and [[Carl Sandburg]], among others. The magazine was instrumental in launching the [[Imagist]] and [[Objectivist poets|Objectivist]] poetic movements. From the 1950s through 1970s, American poetry continued to evolve in Chicago.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SpxbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT271 |title=Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets |last=Diggory |first=Terence |date=April 22, 2015 |publisher=Infobase Learning |isbn=978-1-4381-4066-7 |language=en |access-date=April 20, 2018 |archive-date=July 9, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230709112921/https://books.google.com/books?id=SpxbAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT271 |url-status=live }}</ref> In the 1980s, a modern form of poetry performance began in Chicago, the [[poetry slam]].<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yRG1XpKfemwC&pg=PA255 |title=Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times |last=Rodriguez |first=Luis |date=January 4, 2011 |publisher=Seven Stories Press |isbn=978-1-60980-057-4 |language=en |access-date=April 20, 2018 |archive-date=July 9, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230709112835/https://books.google.com/books?id=yRG1XpKfemwC&pg=PA255 |url-status=live }}</ref>