Poetry - Chicago, My Mother Enters the Workforce, and Find Work

Different names like Hog Butcher (meat slaughtering), Tool maker (tool manufacturer), and Stacker of Wheat (grain storage distribution) tell us that Chicago was a bustling and diverse city at the turn of the century.

The three adjectives were:
1. wicked
2. crooked
3. brutal
Poet counters with “come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

”

Adjectives:
* fierce
* cunning
* bareheaded
* shoveling
* wrecking
* planning
* building
* breaking
* rebuilding
* bold
He thinks they’re hardworking and determined.

Personifications:
1. dust all over his mouth
2. laughing
3. white teeth
Effect: No matter what happens, there is a sense of hope

Similes:
1. laughing as a young man laughs
2. laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle
Effect: The power of youth and the power of the experienced

Chicago is a person because it is given an attitude by bragging, a sense of humor by laughing, and life through a pulse and heart.

The last two lines are a couplet (gg) and have a different meter. The poem is about the grandmother, but the last two lines are about the poet.

Work becomes a therapy for the speaker’s grandmother.

The subject of the poem is the author’s mother. The speaker is the daughter. The title and author helped me identify the answer.

This poem shows a mother going to the ABC Business School who is paying her way through school with a seamstress job. She worked hard making piecework to better support her family.

It says that it is “singing”, meaning it has a steady rhythm and sound.

It would not have created the effect of speech if it wasn’t written as a free verse.

1. “velvet deep as a forest”
—–> simile
—–> compares velvet to a forest (velvet is plush and thick like a forest)
2. “treadle with its locomotive whir”
—–> metaphor
—–> compares a train to a sewing machine (in terms of the sound each one makes)
3. “through quicksand taffeta”
—–> metaphor
—–> compares taffeta (fabric) to quick sand (in terms of the feeling of each)

“Chicago” and “My Mother Enters the Workforce” have the same form, free verse. They don’t have a rhyming pattern or rhythmic pattern.

These poems focus on the different uses of work. In “Find Work”, the work is therapeutic to help her get over the past. In “My Mother Enters the Workforce”, work is a stabilizer of her family and paying for the ABC Business School. With this, she is paving the way for her future.

“Find Work”
—–> past tense
—–> sad
—–> sonnet
—–> has a rhythm
—–> rhymes
“My Mother Enters the Workforce”
—–> present and future tense
—–> joyful
—–> free verse
—–> no rhythm
—–> doesn’t rhyme
Both
—–> last two lines are outcomes
—–> the author is the speaker

In “Chicago”, the tone is busy, proud, and admiring. For example, the line that reads “bareheaded, shoveling, wrecking, planning, building, breaking, rebuilding” shows what a bustling city Chicago is. “The terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs” and “come show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning” show how Chicago is hopeful and proud.
“Find Work”, on the other hand, has a tone of grief. Throughout the poem, we are shown the story of a woman who has lost everything twice and is looking for recovery in work. The tone is exemplified in the line “She spoke so little, it was hard to bare.”

Both poems use personification and similes. The city is personified in “Chicago” and the treadle is personified in “My Mother Enters the Workforce”. There are numerous similes found in both poems. For example, “Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs” and “Laughing even as an ignorant father laughs who has never lost a battle” are two similes found in “Chicago”. In “My Mother Enters the Workforce”, an example is “velvet deep as a forest”.