The poem Laundry by Bruce Smith, is about the relationship between work and money. Furthermore it is about a father and son duo who appear to be working harder than blue collar workers but still struggling to earn a livable wage and are in poverty. The duo are tasked with cleaning up the streets of Philadelphia by doing the laundry of the streets. In this poem the significance of work and money are presented when shown through a struggling father and son who do the labor that no one else wants to feed themselves. Mr. Smith starts the poem with the son even comparing his work, to the work of the "cops", by saying that even "cops" couldn't do the work that he is doing. The use of comparing himself to a police officer is very significant, since cops are tasked with keeping our streets protected, safe, and clean. However the son believes he is quite literally cleaning up the streets by picking up dirty laundry, something the cops wouldn't do. In the mind of the son he sees himself as more valuable than a cop, since a cop with all there training wouldn't be able to do the work that he does. This poem shows me as a reader that life isn't perpetually comfortable and that some people who are less fortunate must work …show more content…
It exposes that the father and son team are part of the continuous class conflict in the world, and they are on the very bottom striving to survive with what they possess. My interpretation of the poem is that no matter the social class you are born in, one thing that will prevail is your appetite for money and arranging whatever necessary to make that money. One ambiguity in the poem is that he may truly be just cleaning up laundry off the street but I think that he is cleaning more than just laundry but the dirt of the streets like he says, "Part ambulance, part bullet". I think here he is referencing all the other types of items besides laundry that they pick
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
The poem “Always Something More Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn is certainly about running a race, but the speaker is also arguing that pursuing something beautiful can help guide us through life. Through the title, we can see that we should constantly look for more beautiful things in life. The poem begins with the speaker describing his experience before a race. He uses words like “best” and “love.” The tone is extremely enthusiastic. In the first line, he talks about coming to the starting place. This can be a metaphor for beginning our lifelong journey. The speaker also implies that we need to approach it with a positive attitude. In the next few lines, the speaker indicates being tested in excellence
The death camp was a terrible place where people where killed. Hitler is who created the death camp for Jews. The death camp was used for extermination on Jews. This occurred on 1939 – 1945. The death camps were in the country of Europe. Hitler did all this because he didn’t like Jews and the religions. The book Night is a autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. The poem called First they came for the communist written by Martin Neimoller is a autobiography.
This narrator is sad and burdened by the lack of work and by the lack of people that actually know what work is. “You know what work is----if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you.” (Levine 1036) The narrator is waiting for hours in the rain to be lucky enough to get work, however at some point he knows he may be turned away, “to the wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, “No, we are not hiring today.”” (Levine 1036) The narrator then goes on to also describe the work that relationships require, the one in the poem is between the narrator and his brother. The narrator speaks of a brother that works nights and that he is now disconnected with, he has never said that he loved him, nor kissed his cheek, “You love your brother now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who’s not beside you or behind you or ahead of you because he’s home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up by noon to study his German.” (Levine
Poetry is a form of literature that some view as obsolete in the modern world, but in the poem “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street”, Franny Choi dispels that belief. She uses poetry as a medium to convey her own personal experience with the stereotyping and fetishization of Asian American women, which is an issue that millions of Asian American women still face today. When considering Choi’s background as a Korean American woman and how that has shaped her identity and philosophy, we see how being an Asian American woman is intrinsically a core part of her work, which is why much of her work is about breaking the stereotypes that come with this identity.
Some people are born into this world without as many chances to get a better position in life. This can affect the people born into a lower class for the entirety of their life. In the poem “Saturday’s Child,” Countee Cullen uses imagery, personification, and similes to suggest the differences between people that are born into poverty and those that are born into an upper class part of society. Throughout this poem Cullen speaks about how the different social classes affect people; he does this with a pessimistic tone throughout the entirety of the poem.
Robert Creeley, a famous American poet, lived from 1926 to 2005. Creeley was normally associated as a Black Mountain poet because that is where he taught, and spent most of his career. Throughout his life, Creeley wrote many different pieces of poetry. Four great poems by Robert Creeley are, “For Love”, “Oh No”, “The Mirror”, and “The Rain”. The poem “For Love”,was written by Creeley for his wife. In this poem Creeley explains, the love someone has for another person, and how complicated it is making his life because the person doesn’t know how to explain their love. “Oh No” is a poem that is literally about a selfish person who ended up in hell, but this poem has a deeper meaning. Part
The poem is about Stark and his family dismantling their house. The poem starts off with the selling of common household items: lumbar, toilets, nails, kindling and French doors. It then proceeds to the demolition of the house first tearing off the roof and then they rest of the house. The theme of this poem is angry. Stark is angry that his house is being dismantled. Stark is also confused as to what will remain when his house is gone, “And when we are finished, - what will there be at Ninth and Van Buren? - A square bare of earth- where a house was. - Sidewalk. Foundation. Concrete stoop. - Two steps up- and you’re there.” This poem like many other poems by Stark is a snip-bit of Stark’s life that is relatable to many
Australian poets Bruce Dawe and Gwen Harwood explore ideas and emotions in their poems through vivid and aural poetic techniques, the poets also use symbolism to allow the readers to relate to the text. In Dawes “Homecoming”, the poet explores the ideas in the text using language techniques such as irony, paradox and visual imagery to construct his attitude towards war and the effect. While in Gwen Harwood’s, “The violets”, she uses prevailing imagery and mood to emphasize fertility and growth. Contrastingly, In Bruce daws, “Life cycle”, the poet uses the idea of sport to symbolise and represent religion with the use of clichés and juxtaposition to convey his ideas of religion, myths and Christianity in the language use, similarly Harwood poem
...e family’s life style; that they live in poverty and go to church on Sundays. The poem is centered on one question: “what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?” The majority of the poem is examples of “love’s austere and lonely offices”. One such example would be when the boy polishes his shoes, probably getting ready to go to church. The father, although poor, still passes on good values to his son by going to church on Sundays. Another example would be the father waking up earlier than the rest of the house to get it warmed up. He deeply cares and loves his family and doesn’t want them to suffer in the cold and darkness as long as possible (only suffer at night). Another example of the father’s love is when he wakes up earlier and gets the wood from the cold outside weather to keep the family and house warm instead of enlisting for help from his family.
Li-Young Lee’s poem, A Story, explores a complex relationship between a father and his five year old son. Although the poem’s purpose is to elaborate on the complexity of the relationship and the father’s fear of disappointing his son, the main conflict that the father is faced with is not uncommon among parents. Lee is able to successfully portray the father’s paranoia and son’s innocence through the use of alternating point of view, stanza structure, and Biblical symbolism.
The last two stanzas are important because they are metaphoric for the way women are suppressed and forced to stay at home — doing the cleaning and watching the children. It was considered wrong and out of the norm if a woman wished to get a career for her own. Plath is trying to tell us that women who have become “drudges” as a result of marriage have more potential than just being house keepers and baby-makers.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze and compare and contrast the two paired poems “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and “My Ex-Husband” by Gabriel Spera to find the similarities presented within the pairs. Despite the monumental time difference between “My Last Duchess” and “My Ex-Husband”, throughout both poems you will see that somebody is wronged by someone they thought was a respectable person and this all comes about by viewing a painting on the wall or picture on a shelf.
This poem is about a servant that serves other servants. This servant has to clean up after and feed these men, and their work is never done because it is an endless cycle. This servant is of a lower status than the rest of them because the clean up after everyone, and therefore is seen as lowly and is ignored by them all. This servant is at the bottom of the social ladder and is being isolated because they are different. Then this servant goes on to tell the story of their uncle that had a cage built for him because he was crazy. They go on to say that they are glad they got away from that, they had made jokes about the cage being a jail. That even when they were there with the uncle in the attic, they were still happy enough to have a roof over their head. Even though they are deemed as worthless and lowly as the servants servant, that they will stay because they must be kept and it is better than living outside, although that would mean freedom, the roof is better than the ground. The tone of this poem is very casual, the speaker tells this seemingly sad and unfortunate story in a manner that sounds like casual conversation. This poem had a rhythm to it, that I couldn’t quite get in reading it aloud, but it’s obviously there. The rhythm helped the words flow and tell the
The poem, “What Work Is” by Philip Levine is an intricate and thought-provoking selection. Levine uses a slightly confusing method of describing what work actually is. He gives the idea that work is very tedious, however necessary. It is miserable, however, it is a sacrifice that is essentially made by many, if not all able-bodied members of society. Many have to sacrifice going to a concert or a movie, but instead works jobs with hardly a manageable salary. This poem seems to have a focus on members of the lower-class or middle-class who live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to put money away for a future for their children or for a vacation and how difficult life can be made to be while living under this type of circumstance. Levine