Baby Vamps
Baby Vamps - form Summary
Free Verse Street-carnival Voice
This poem uses free verse and direct address to create a conversational, streetwise voice. Sandburg strings together urban leisure scenes—skating rinks, roller coasters, soda parlors—to sketch a recurring figure, the "baby vamp," whose daytime and nighttime presence blurs work and play. The loose, rhythmic cataloging and repeated questions give the impression of observation and casual interrogation, emphasizing modern city life and its commodified social interactions.
Read Complete AnalysesBaby vamps, is it harder work than it used to be? Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons? Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night? In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks, Wherever figure eights are carved, by skates in winter, by roller coasters in summer, Wherever the whirligigs are going and chicken spanish and hot dog are sold, There you come, giggling baby vamp, there you come with your blue baby eyes, saying: Take me along.
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