by name, previously published in The Masses and International Socialist Review, was replaced with the more tepid and anonymous "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter".

Chicago Poems established Sandburg as a major figure in contemporary literature. Chicago Poems, and its follow-up volumes of verse, Cornhuskers (1918) and Smoke and Steel (1920) represent Sandburg's attempts to found an American version of social realism, writing expansive verse