This picture shows the stone bridge mentioned in the poem by Peter Ludwin.
The world’s great spiritual leaders—Buddha, Isaiah,
Jesus, Mohammed—for Instance, have taken a special interest in those who are
poor, and have entreated their followers to be generous to the needy. Poets can
handle the issue of poverty in many ways. There is a risk of moving past
sentiment into sentimentality, of going into the opposite direction, into
insensitivity. The form a poem regarding poverty takes depends on how the poet
encounters it, and the poet’s ability (or inability) to identify with those who
are poor.
I was raised in a family which was on the line between
“lower middle class” and “upper lower class” (to use the language learned in
schoo). There was an obvious “pecking order” in elementary school, and I was
aware I was close to the bottom. One year, a child who was much more
economically deprived than I joined my class. I was immediately aware that I
got picked on less as she was picked on more. I felt relieved—and guilty for
feeling relieved.
My first encounter with extreme poverty came when I was
on the debate team at American University in Washington,D.C. We participated in
a tournament in New York City on a bitterly cold weekend. One experience I had that
weekend has had a life-long impact on me. It was years after the experience
that I wrote the following poem:
Feet on the Subway
His coat was ragged
as his face. His worn hat
and threadbare gloves
could not protect him
from the icy cold racing
through the wind tunnels
of New York City.
Probably he panhandled
coins to ride the subway.
My eyes were drawn
from his drawn face,
his recessed eyes,
to the skin of his ankles
stretched tight and red,
his puffy feet, pressed
into loafers, the newspaper
stuffing visible through
large holes in the soles.
I shivered less from the cold
than the coldness
with which I stared.
I reached my station,
rose and left the subway car.
I took his feet with me.
Look, the swollen ankles,
the newspaper-stuffed shoes
are still stored
just behind
my eyes.
~ Wilda Morris
This poem, which was first published on the website of
the Evanston. Illinois, Public Library, and has been republished several times,
focuses on the impact of the experience on the narrator.
While I was in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico,
earlier this year, I purchased a copy of Atención,
a local bilingual newspaper. It included a poem by Rick Roberts. His poem
focuses on the interaction between the narrator and a woman who sits on the
sidewalk begging for coins:
For
a Peso
I saw a twisted old woman half sitting,
half lying on the sidewalk,
I stopped to drop a peso In her basket.
As I bent down, she looked up,
her eyes probing mine, pulling me
into her very being.
Did I see the mother she had once been,
her children now scattered and lost to
her?
Had she once been someone’s bride,
some young man’s passion?
Had her body always been broken,
or had she run with her friends laughing
in the sun?
Had she ever been carefree, giggling,
sharing her dreams and her longings?
Had she held the hands of her brothers
and sisters
as they skipped across the plaza?
In her long life had she ever felt safe,
sheltered, and wholly loved?
Then I saw in those eyes
that she had been all those things.
Was all those things.
Is all those things.
As I finally released the coin
into her basket, she smiled
the sweetest smile, said “gracias.”
Then released me to my passing self.
~ Rick Roberts
From For a Peso, by Rick Roberts. Also published in Atención, January 4, 2012, page 17. Used by
permission of the author.
Peter Ludwin who goes to San Miguel de Allende every
winter, developed some degree of relationship to a street vendor named Carmela.
Carmela was not destitute as the man on the New York Subway or the woman
described by Rick Roberts, but her economic means were obviously limited.
Perhaps I have a bias in favor of this poem because I stayed in the same posada
in San Miguel, and also purchased gorditas
from Carmela. I’m also impressed by the way Ludwin broadens the focus of the
poem to include historical and socio-economic factors. The images and metaphors
in this poem are also strong. Unlike the two poems above, this poem is
addressed to its subject.
Existential
Every winter when I return to San Miguel
I find you in the same spot
under the little stone bridge: Carmela,
the gordita
woman, a mestiza crone
one step removed from the shriveled Indian
begging in a doorway like a starving bird.
For thirty years you’ve made empanadas
filled with cheese and hot chilies
on your comal,
hand dipped in a bucket
of tainted water I ignore. What are you
if not the chime of the tolling bell?
Mexico’s true constant, a blue feather
waltzing with dust? Revolutions, coups,
cartels—they come and they go, rank winds
that sear the eyebrows and ravish unsuspecting nuns.
You remain, the lines and folds of your skin
the paths of ruined armies, of obsidian blades
and Spanish bayonets kicked up by a plowing mule.
Once, coming down from the Andes,
an old man asked me What
is your faith?
I knew what he wanted: that identity card like
American Express. Inconceivable
I would ever leave home without it.
A casualty, that faith, like so many others
in the course of learning to stand naked.
More reliable those simple things that anchor
the common rhyme: a rooster, a bougainvillea.
And you, gordita woman?
I believe in you as others believe
in Exxon or the New
York Times,
the way I used to believe in the Lone Ranger,
a masked redeemer unscarred by doubt,
a range rider whose shirts never creased.
What I see is what I get. Digging for change,
you feed me in places neither of us
has drawn on our worn, tattered maps.
~ Peter Ludwin
From Rumors of
Fallible Gods (Rockford MI: Presa Press, 2013), pp. 36-37. Used by
permission of the author.
About
the poets:
Rick Roberts lived in Camano Island, Washington, for
twelve years before moving to Mexico. He found his poetic voice in San Miguel
de Allende, near the age of 69. He believes both truth and music are the
essential elements that bring power to words. One without the other leaves us
feeling, somehow, incomplete.” (NOTE: The poet named Rick Roberts who has a
website is a different Rick Roberts).
Peter Ludwin is a folk musician as well as a poet. He
regularly participates in the San Miguel Poetry Week (see http://www.sanmiguelpoetry.com/ ).
He has received prestigious awards, including a Literary Fellowship from Artist
Trust, second prize in the 2007-2008 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards, and two
Pushcart Prize nominations. His poems have occurred in numerous journals,
including Nimrod, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Comstock
Review.
More
Poets on Poverty:
Carl Sandburg, “Old Woman” - http://www.quotesandpoem.com/poems/SelectedPoemByTopic/Sandburg/Poverty/OLD%20WOMAN/61
Jane Taylor, “Poverty” - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182540#poem
Hayden Carruth, “Notes on Poverty” - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182319
Henry Lawson, “Poverty” - http://allpoetry.com/poem/8446423-Poverty-by-Henry_Lawson
Langston Hughes, “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria”
- http://www.quotesandpoem.com/poems/SelectedPoemByTopic/Hughes/Poverty/Advertisement%20For%20The%20Waldorf-Astoria/71
Robert Service, “Lottery Ticket” - http://www.quotesandpoem.com/poems/SelectedPoemByTopic/Service/Poverty/%20%20%20%20Lottery%20Ticket/288
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Poverty and Wealth” - http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/ella_wheeler_wilcox/poems/17143
Poetry
Challenge for March 2013: Poverty
For the March challenge, write a poem about your
encounter with poverty (your own or someone else’s) or, more broadly, about
poverty as a social issues. No poems that belittle those in poverty will be
considered.
How to Submit Your Poem
Please
put your name at the bottom of the poem (note the format used above). Poems
published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line
social networks) are not eligible. If your poem has been published in a
periodical, please include publication data. Poems submitted after the March 15
deadline will not be considered.
If
the judge or judges for the month do not believe any poem submitted is quite
good enough, no winner will be declared. Decisions of the judges are final.
Send
your poem to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at”
and a . for [dot]). Put "February Poetry Challenge" in the subject
line of your email. If you want a bio published with your poem should it be a
winner, please include put a brief bio below your poem. Submission of a poem
gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner. The deadline
is March 15, 2013 (Central Daylight Time). Copyright on poems is retained by
their authors.
© 2013 Wilda Morris
