Eleventh Avenue Racket
Eleventh Avenue Racket - context Summary
Published in 1916 Chicago Poems
Published in Sandburg’s 1916 collection Chicago Poems, "Eleventh Avenue Racket" sketches a crowded, noisy street tableau beside an empty, rent-sign house. The poem layers vernacular refrain and catalogues of small personal events to dramatize urban contradiction: life’s bustling surface amid literal or emotional vacancies. Its repeated nonsense chorus and quick domestic details make the city feel alive while insisting on an underlying hollowness and social dislocation.
Read Complete AnalysesThere is something terrible about a hurdy-gurdy, a gipsy man and woman, and a monkey in red flannel all stopping in front of a big house with a sign “For Rent” on the door and the blinds hanging loose and nobody home. I never saw this. I hope to God I never will. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum. Nobody home? Everybody home. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie Jones died of whooping cough: George Hacks got a job on the police force: the Rosenheims bought a brass bed: Lena Hart giggled at a jackie: a pushcart man called tomaytoes, tomaytoes. Whoop-de-doodle-de-doo. Hoodle-de-harr-de-hum. Nobody home? Everybody home.
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