Halsted Street Car
Come you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o'clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth-- That overall factory girl--her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory Of tired empty faces. After their night's sleep, In the moist dawn And cool daybreak, Faces Tired of wishes, Empty of dreams.
Halsted Street Car - context Summary
Published in 1916
This poem, published in Sandburg's 1916 collection Chicago Poems, records an early-morning scene on a Halsted streetcar. The speaker invites artists to sketch the commuting working-class passengers, emphasizing their worn, empty faces after a night's sleep. It functions as a documentary gesture: a city poet appeals for visual testimony to ordinary urban life and the exhaustion of laboring people in Chicago.
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