Analysis of 3 Poems by Martin Espada - Essay Example

Analysis of 3 Poems by Martin Espada Martin Espada is a notable Latin poet and is renowned for notable contribution to poetry especially in Latin America. His words flow on paper very systematically and beautifully and through his poems he has been able to deliver messages to the people regarding emotions and feelings. He teaches poetry at the University of Massachusetts and has received innumerable awards and honors for his work. This paper helps to provide an analysis of three major poems of his which have a lot of in depth meaning and transition from one theme to another. The three poems used within this paper are ‘Latin Night at the Pawnshop’, ‘Bully’ and ‘Rednecks’ and all three poems have an abstract form to it, and their meanings, connotation of words etc have been explained during the course of this essay. The three poems have a wonderful link among each other as one poem shifts from one era or period of the poet’s life to the next. The three poems also help in depicting the life of the poet as a young boy to a man, and how he faces the impact of being a Latin immigrant living in America. It is also ironical to note that today, as an older man; his poems are being read and taught within American schools, a further connotation of Latin American understanding and influence over American society. Latin Night at the Pawnshop is a short lyric poem divided into two stanzas. As per the lines of the poem, the poet suggests that the time and place of the poem was Chelsea in the year 1987. The poem talks of images and helps the reader to imagine the same in his mind and thus turns out to be subjective poem, with many different perspectives. The primary image of the poem is of a number of musical equipments, affiliated to a long forgotten salsa band, lie in a pawnshop for sale; this may be suggested by the first stanza itself, “The apparition of a salsa band gleaming in the Liberty Loan pawnshop window.” The poem however fails to answer the connotative meaning of the salsa band; why were the musical equipments lying there in a failed way – was it because the public did not like salsa music, was it because the culture of the music was slowly drifting away, or was it because the band was no good? The presence of the instruments however, denote the cultural aspect of the poet’s background and they are an indication of the poet’s personal heritage clashing with American culture; this could mean that the salsa band culture was dying out on cold Christmas night in Chelsea, Massachusetts. ("The Best American Poetry 1996”) Furthermore, the name of the pawnshop, ‘Liberty Loan’ also perhaps suggests that no other culture may feel liberated at the cost of American Liberty or that American liberty demands that a non American culture loan its freedom from the main nation before it can go its own way. Bully, written by Espada, the use of irony is visible clearly as a backdrop of American society has been used in order to describe major events that take place within the same. The tone of the poem is very serious at its inception, "In the school auditorium / the Theodore Roosevelt statue / nostalgic", and it is so because a matter of historical importance is being written about. Another side theme of the poem is based on wartime, as written by the poet himself. The poet writes about the involvement of Roosevelt in the Spanish American war and how the same caused a vast amount of immigration in Boston mainly. According to history, Roosevelt has been said to hold ethnocentric views, however, Espada revokes the same belief and states otherwise. He writes, “But now the Roosevelt school is pronounced Hernández. Puerto Rico has invaded Roosevelt with its army of Spanish-singing children in the hallways.” This line denotes the title of the poem ‘bully’ to be justified as it talks about the majority ruling over the youth in American society today. The same people that Roosevelt was against during the war have now taken over the school in America and renamed it in order to impose their cultural and social strata within the society. The lines “Roosevelt is surrounded by all the face she never showed in eugenic spite and cursed as mongrels, skin of one race, hair and cheekbones of another,” depict the image of Roosevelt during the time of the war, how he behaved with the natives of Latin America and thus now the minority of Latin Americans in America are doing to Roosevelt what he did to them by wiping his image from the walls of the school and making merry by spreading their cheer. The poem also signifies the effect of immigrants from Latin America into American society, as is the very background of the author himself. The poem might even be considered as controversial because many might feel that Espada has offended Roosevelt’s repute by talking about ethnocentricity due to being afraid of incorporating change within society and including a majority from another ethnicity. The third poem to be analysed within this essay is Espada’s ‘Rednecks’; this poem talks mainly about the working class society in America at the time when Espada himself was a young boy, working in order to make ends meet for himself as well as his family. It must be understood that most immigrants from Latin America formed the rednecks or the labour class society of America at the time, and even do to an extent today. All the menial work is carried out by them and they live a harsh life with their families in a country where they form the minority and have fewer rights than the natives. The first line of the poem, “At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road, the high school boys pumping gas would snicker at the rednecks,” itself suggests that society was divided into the haves and the have-nots. Out of this, the rednecks or the working class were often ridiculed by the higher classes of society by the richer people. In this poem, the poet talks about working at the gas station where the cream of society would often drop by in order to have their car tanks filled. “Every Saturday night there was Earl, puckering his liquor-smashed face to announce that he was driving across the bridge, a bridge spanning only the whiskey river that bubbled in his stomach.” ("Rednecks.") These lines suggest that there were richer boys who would boisterously announce their travels and plans for the weekends to the poorer gas station boys who would fill their tanks with gas and long for the life that they had, driving without any care, across the bridge and flirting with girls who drove alongside them. The author then talks about the other kind of people whom he would often chance upon at the gas station; a farmer filling his pickup truck in order to transport his harvest; a woman with her face so full of makeup that it would often ooze off and give her a horrible countenance as she vainly got her gas tank filled. However, her beauty attracted the farmer who leaned over in order to kiss her; this was the life that the gas station boys looked upon from far away and dreamed to have but knew that they could never, because for everyone else, they were mainly rednecks and nothing more. All three poems written by Espada have a similar theme of possessing a background from Latin America. The poet himself has written about his experiences as A Latino immigrant living in America. The first poem helps to depict the fall of Latin culture in American society and puts thoughts into the minds of the readers regarding the various causes of the same. Bully, helps in order for the readers to understand the changes taking place in America because of immigrant from Latin America settling permanently and seeking jobs there. (Tucker, Tracy) They send their children to American schools in such large numbers that the schools have gone from being American to being predominantly Latin American and the impact is such that the name of the school has even changed. An aspect of Roosevelt’s attitude towards the Latinos has also been provided by suggesting the manner in which he thought them to be of an inferior background and later is condemned by them as they have taken over, literally, ‘bullied’. The third poem talks about the confluence of the working class or the rednecks within American society, who are mostly Latin Americans and how they long to be in the position of the richer American society. All three poems transition into each other because they suggest three different themes all warped into a larger topic of interest – the position of Latin Americans in American society. Coming from the background itself, the poet is extremely well versed with the way he survived within America and thus the poems are images from his mind, transported on to paper. In conclusion, all three poems have a number of similarities as per the theme however, they do share dissimilarities as well because they talk of three different periods within the poet’s life; the first is about when he was a young boy passing through the Liberty Loan shop, the second about his school life and the third probably about his college days when he was working part time at the gas station. The poems have been constructed beautifully with a number of connotations and denotations in the form of images and objects suggesting various meanings for the author to portray towards his audience. The poems also contain a number of figures of speech as discussed, the primary ones being metaphors and ironical sentences. Works Cited "The Best American Poetry 1996 - ENotes.com Reference." Enotes.com. Enotes.com. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. . Tucker, Tracy. "Martin Espada's Denunciation of American Ethnocentrism in the Poem, Bully." Helium. Helium, 08 June 2007. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. . "Rednecks." Martinespada. Web. 10 Apr. 2012. . Read More