Writing Project 2
- First Attempt due
Monday, July 3, 2017
- Length
2-3 pages
- Polished Draft due
Thursday, July 6, 2017
- Sources
Handed Out In Class
Today in class we began to look at some texts that offered a different way of presenting poverty: poetry. MartÃn Espada’s poems describe a specific kind of poverty: the experiences of his clients, who were mostly poor, Latino/a renters in conflict with their landlords.
These poems give us the chance not just to understand, but to see and experience the struggles these people went through from their point of view. Because we can empathize with the people in Espada’s poems, we can see their poverty the way he does: as a result of a bunch of tiny ways that some people have an advantage over others.
In short, Espada is exploring a question that I want us to begin thinking about: how does poverty happen? Why are some people poor, and why is it so hard for them to escape that poverty? These are questions we can’t answer yet—and perhaps that we can’t ever answer fully—but I’d like us to begin to think about what the answers might be.
As we continue to think about what poverty means and where it comes from, I’d like you to look closely at one of Espada’s longer poems, and explain what you think it says about poverty.
Your Task
For this Writing Project, please choose one of the following poems by Espada to write about:
- “Thieves of Light”
- “City of Coughing and Dead Radiators”
- “Offerings to an Ulcerated God”
In your essay, please summarize the poem, and use it to answer the following question:
What does this poem show us about how and why poverty happens?
Things to Think About and Do
In order to answer the question above, you’ll need to explain both what the poem says and what it means—which, with poems, are often not the same thing. You’ll need to use specific examples and quotations from the text to support what you say about it.
The “I Say” component of this assignment will be your interpretation—that is, your explanation of what you think the poem means, and how you see it as connected to poverty. Making that connection will be difficult, because it will require you to look beyond the “what happens” part. Remember, as you read, that part of the meaning of a poem like this lies in what the writer chooses to include—what details, specifics, and facts he feels are worth mentioning—as well as how he chooses to present them.
The poems are posted on Blackboard in the Readings section.