The poem that inspired Sufjan Stevens’ classic ‘Chicago’
When conceptualising his 2005 concept album Illinois, the second of his based on a US state (following 2003’s Michigan), Sufjan Stevens set out to acutely study the history of “the Prairie State”.
As part of a proposed project to craft a series of album for each of the 50 US States (which Stevens has since said was a joke), Stevens dove into researching the history of Illinois, from the archaeological remnants of Cahokia Mounds, an indigenous region, to its indigenous communities, the history of European immigration and the innovations of the Industrial Revolution.
“I needed to step back and get a view from the moon, so to speak,” the musician explained to Gapers Block in 2005. “I figured that an inquiry into the civilisation of mankind requires the most objective vantage point, namely that of an alien. We are all aliens here.”
He chose to open the album with ‘Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois’, a story of an alleged extraterrestrial sighting. “Because America is a nation of immigrants, it seemed appropriate to begin with a supernatural visitation,” Stevens explained. “My parents were certain, in the mid-80s, that they were Star People. This would make me an alien offspring, so of course I’ve always been obsessed with outer space. Who isn’t?”
Stylised on the cover as Sufjan Stevens invites you to: Come on feel the Illinoise, each song on the album is an ode to the facets of Illinois’ history. Stevens consciously set aside the most common themes that the state is often associated with, “sports teams, the Mob, etc,” he said, instead leaning into the humanity that shaped its past. The album’s most well-known song, ‘Chicago,’ hears Stevens take a bit of an autobiographical inspiration.
“Even native Illinoisans will approach this record as tourists, because everything’s been rendered through a particular imagination that naturally transcends reality,” Stevens said, describing the album as one “of geographical displacement”.
“I’ve had quite a few exceptional and traumatic experiences in Illinois, a few times when visiting Chicago at a particularly difficult time in my life or driving cross country and being pulled over by the cops just outside of Peoria,” he expanded.
“The album renders fact and fiction equally, extracting particular events from my life, my memory and transplanting them in the landscape of Illinois.”
Sufjan Stevens
‘Chicago’ reckons with bygone love and the search for identity, travelling between Chicago and New York in pursuit of hope. Repeated phrases like “All things know”, “In my mind”, and “All things go/grow” echo with optimism and promise. “If I was crying / In the van, with my friend,” Stevens sings, “It was for freedom / From myself and from the land.”
When writing for the album, Stevens’ research expanded into literature. Alongside children’s books, various histories and diving into Chicago writer Saul Bellow’s work, Stevens named Carl Sandburg as a source of inspiration“, a now kind of outdated poet who wrote the ‘Chicago’ poem”, he described to Dusted in 2005.
Sandburg was known for writing in a “free verse” style of poetry, favouring storytelling over the conventions of structure. In 1916, he published Chicago Poems, a collection that includes the titular ‘Chicago’, dedicated to the city as Sandburg’s adopted home, where he moved in 1912 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
As quoted in The World of Carl Sandburg (1961), the poet described ‘Chicago’ as “a chant of defiance by Chicago… its defiance of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. The poem sort of says ‘Maybe we ain’t got culture, but we’re eatin’ regular”.
Chicago Poems established Sandburg as a primary figure in contemporary literature, known for conveying social realism, as Stevens does similarly across Illinois. “I guess for me it’s not even as much about the US as it is about myself and my imagination,” Stevens expanded, of his motivations for the Michigan and Illinois projects and beyond. “The states themselves are just kind of the fabric, they’re kind of the canvas, and they create very helpful arbitrary guidelines.”
