Harrison Street Court
I heard a woman’s lipsSpeaking to a companionSay these words:
“A woman what hustlesNever keeps nothin’For all her hustlin’.Somebody always getsWhat she goes on the street for.If it ain’t a pimpIt’s a bull what gets it.I been hustlin’ nowTill I ain’t much good any more.I got nothin’ to show for it.Some man got it all,Every night’s hustlin’ I ever did.”
Words in this poem
- somebody n.
- A person unknown or uncertain; a person indeterminate; some person.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Harrison Street Court is in the public domain. This text is taken from Chicago Poems, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, Harrison Street Court, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/harrison-street-court.html, id L28969.
Form and metre
Harrison Street Court is 15 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 ----A-B-AB-- hustles · nothin · hustlin · gets · forA · pimp · itB · now · moreA · itB · all · did
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I heard a woman’s lips | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Speaking to a companion | 7 | /˘··˘/˘ |
| Say these words: | 3 | ··· |
| “A woman what hustles | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Never keeps nothin’ | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| For all her hustlin’. | 5 | ····· |
| Somebody always gets | 6 | /·˘/·· |
| What she goes on the street for. | 7 | ······· |
| If it ain’t a pimp | 5 | ····· |
| It’s a bull what gets it. | 6 | ······ |
| I been hustlin’ now | 5 | ····· |
| Till I ain’t much good any more. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I got nothin’ to show for it. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Some man got it all, | 5 | ····· |
| Every night’s hustlin’ I ever did.” | 10 | /˘˘····/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.