Carl Sandburg

Hats

Hats - meaning Summary

Hats as Urban Life

Standing on a skyscraper, the speaker addresses hats as if they were inhabitants, asking where they belong and what lies beneath them. From above the hats form a vast, buzzing mass likened to bees, livestock and waterfalls, then paradoxically to silences of sea grass and prairie corn. The poem compresses urban crowding and anonymous human lives into an image that questions identity, aspiration and belonging beneath the city skyline.

Read Complete Analyses

HATS, where do you belong? what is under you? On the rim of a skyscraper's forehead I looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats: Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls, Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn. Hats: tell me your high hopes.

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