Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Robert Winner’s "Wall Street" explores the tension between material survival and artistic aspiration in the bustling, impersonal environment of Manhattan. The speaker grapples with the necessity of earning a living in a world that prioritizes money over poetry, and yet, despite this capitalist landscape, poetry remains an inescapable force—woven into the city’s structure, its streets, its windows, and even its mechanical rhythms. Winner’s poem is both an observation and an interrogation, questioning whether the poet can remain true to his art while navigating the demands of economic survival.

The poem opens with stark imagery: "Getting money, not poems from these spit-thin streets / Searching out the grains for bread among these cornices these pigeon roosts / this stone of money dark Manhattan." The contrast between money and poetry establishes the poem’s central conflict. The phrase "spit-thin streets" suggests a harsh, unyielding environment where sustenance—both literal and artistic—is difficult to find. "Searching out the grains for bread" evokes the struggle of daily existence, reinforcing the theme that economic survival is a relentless, grinding pursuit. The reference to "cornices" and "pigeon roosts" positions the speaker within the city’s architecture, implying that even its smallest, most overlooked spaces are part of the hunt for financial stability.

Yet the poem quickly asserts that poetry remains inescapable: "The poem never leaves me out of itself / The poem recites me from sidewalks and windows / from cracks of sunlight over a city foreign to me as Asia." Here, the speaker suggests that poetry is not a separate, abstract force but something deeply embedded in his reality. Despite the alienating nature of Manhattan—"a city foreign to me as Asia"—the poem follows him, speaking through the urban landscape. This personification of poetry gives it a relentless quality, as if it refuses to be ignored even in a place that prioritizes commerce over creativity.

Winner then shifts to a meditation on ambition and time: "Its voice calls down to me from glazed hand-lettered doors / the half-truths of my ambitions... the years go forward on my hungers like a narration." The "glazed hand-lettered doors" suggest a polished but somewhat deceptive world, where aspirations may not always align with reality. The phrase "the half-truths of my ambitions" acknowledges the speaker’s own complicity in this system—perhaps he once believed in the promises of success, only to find them elusive or compromised. The final line of this stanza—"the years go forward on my hungers like a narration"—reinforces the idea that life is unfolding as an inevitable story, one driven by the need to sustain oneself rather than by personal fulfillment.

The next stanza underscores the body’s relationship to labor: "Getting my bread just that / eating it, fleshing out, decaying." The act of working for sustenance becomes a cycle of survival and deterioration. The phrase "fleshing out, decaying" suggests that while work provides nourishment, it also erodes the body over time. The tension between necessity and mortality is heightened—earning a living may sustain, but it also wears one down.

The poem’s turning point comes in the realization that "Bread must be the poem that always exists / my body?s meaning moving me through hallways past marble where spring hides / past rivers locked in wood." Here, Winner equates bread—both literal and metaphorical—with poetry. If poetry is sustenance, then it must be tied to the physicality of existence. The phrase "past marble where spring hides" juxtaposes rigid structures (corporate buildings, financial institutions) with the idea of renewal and rebirth. Similarly, "past rivers locked in wood" evokes something natural that has been contained or restricted, reinforcing the idea that the speaker’s creative impulses are constrained by his economic realities.

The final stanza delves into the mechanical, impersonal rhythms of corporate life: "The secretive insistent meaning of the elevators / the clocks the faces of clerks / the cop retired to his bank job / the desk the telephone the white shirt / the window?s question ?Why not get out of here?? / the numbers crawling across the walls the poem." The "elevators, clocks, faces of clerks" embody the repetitive, institutionalized nature of corporate work. The mention of the "cop retired to his bank job" underscores how even figures of authority must conform to the economic system, transitioning from one form of labor to another. The "white shirt" is a universal symbol of office life, reducing individuality to a uniform. The line "the window’s question ?Why not get out of here??" introduces an internal conflict—there is a longing to escape, but the poet remains trapped within this environment. The poem ends abruptly with "the numbers crawling across the walls the poem," merging finance and poetry in a final assertion that even within the rigid structures of capitalism, poetry remains omnipresent, refusing to be erased.

Winner’s "Wall Street" is a meditation on the uneasy coexistence of artistic ambition and economic necessity. The city is both a place of entrapment and inspiration, where the rhythms of corporate life threaten to subsume the poet’s identity, yet poetry persists in the cracks of the urban landscape. The poem does not offer resolution—only the ongoing tension between survival and creativity, between the "bread" that sustains the body and the "poem" that sustains the soul. Through its fluid, incantatory style and its interplay of physical and abstract imagery, "Wall Street" captures the experience of the working artist, one who cannot escape the economic machine but refuses to let it silence him.

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