The Poor
By: Edhela Enriquez
& Kenneth Royce
THESIS
William contrasts the past &
present of the neighborhood to
portray the changes in the structure
of society and its shortcomings
through time.
OVERALL
INTERPRETATION
• Those in poverty are used to its conditions while
society tries to hide what is wrong and ignore what
will eventually overwhelm them by trying to remain
in control through false definition of what it really
is that the poor needs
•
“It fits/the dress of children/reflecting every stage and/custom of necessity “
(7-10)
• Shows contrast between past and present of how
the neighborhood has changed:
•
“…the old/yellow wooden house indented/among the new brick tenements”
(3-4)
SENSES:
Meaning and Language



Purpose/Effect:
Williams uses sarcasm in the
beginning of the poem to show his
feelings for how society tries to
hide or ignore problems such as
poverty, effectively showing the
feeling contentment and justice in
how poverty eventually “has
overwhelmed the entire city” in the
end of the poem.
Speaker: Person who is pondering the
irony about poverty
Point of View: First person
Mood:
o Contentment
 “It’s the anarchy of poverty/delights
me” (1-2)
 “in a wind that fitfully/turning his
corner has/overwhelmed the entire
city” (18-20)

Tone:
o Satire and sarcasm
 “It’s the anarchy of poverty/delights
me” (1-2)

Diction:
o “anarchy” (1): uncontrollable chaos; an
effort to put chaos in organized form
o “delights” (2): satire or ridiculing of poverty
and how it eventually overwhelmed the
entire city
SENSES:

o “…the old/yellow wooden home
indented/among the new brick tenements”
(2-4)
o “enclosing next to/nothing at all” (13-14)
o “sweeps the sidewalk/his own ten feet of it”
(16-17)
Imagery and Symbols
Purpose/Effect:
The use of imagery portrays
poverty for what it is and to
emphasize how the setting has
evolved from the old man’s house
to the new buildings around it to
show progression of time.
Williams uses the symbols of what
is thought to be necessary to
compare society’s idea of what is
needed to that of what the poor is
used to thriving on, showing both
sides of society. The symbolism for
time portrays how the structure of
society changed through time.
Poverty imagery in poem:

Time imagery in poem:
o “…the old/yellow wooden home
indented/among the new brick tenements”
(2-4)
o “Or a cast-iron balcony/with panels showing
oak branches/in full leaf” (5-7)

Symbolism:
o “Chimneys, roofs, fences of/wood and metal”
(11-12): what is necessary but is really not
o “old man” (14): time – how he lived through
the changes in society; poverty – he owns
the old yellow house, from where the
poverty started and spread
STYLE:

o “It’s the anarchy of poverty/delights me” (1-2):
sarcastic ridiculing of how poverty is – to show
human shortcomings
Poetry Techniques
Purpose/Effect:
Williams uses juxtaposition to
compare the old against the new to
show time passing. He also
juxtaposes the size of the old man’s
property to the entire city to
emphasize how much poverty has
spread after a period of time.
Satire

Metaphor
o “…It fits/the dress of the children” (7-8):
metaphor of visual imagery – meant to show
how the poor are used to the conditions they
are living in

Juxtaposition
o “…the old/yellow wooden house
indented/among the new brick tenements” (34): old vs. new
o “children” & “old man” (8 & 14): to show
difference between new generation and old
generation
o “his own ten feet” & “overwhelmed the entire
city” (17 & 20): compares small size of old
man’s property to the entire city to emphasize
how much poverty spread
Williams style of stream-ofconsciousness reflects his
pondering on how structure of
society has changed as time went
on.

Stream of consciousness throughout the
poem
STRUCTURE:
Form, Organization, & Pattern
Purpose/Effect:
Williams uses enjambment to
emphasize thought process of the
speaker, in which the first sentence
focuses more on the irony he finds
about the growth of poverty
throughout time, while the second
sentence is more on his reflection on
the life of someone in poverty and
society’s part in ignoring the problem
and allowing it to spread.
End-stopped is used to show the
breaks in the speakers almost
continuous thought process, breaking
it into parts: the beginning on
portraying time passing; the middle
on differences of what the poor and
what society thinks is necessary to
live; the ending on showing effects of
time on the city.
 Enjambment
o Only two sentences in the poem
 Lines 1-7
 Lines 7-20
 End-stopped
o
o
o
o
“in full leaf.” (7)
“custom of necessity – “ (10)
“nothing at all:” (14)
“hat who sweeps the sidewalk – “ (16)
STRUCTURE:
Form, Organization, & Pattern
Purpose/Effect:
By having four lines for all stanzas,
it helps to reflect how time is
constant and life goes on.
Williams uses syllables to connect
the first and last line with the idea
that poverty is an uncontrollable
chaos that has spread, and then the
second line to show emphasis on
the speaker’s feelings/thoughts on
poverty, giving the poem a tone of
satire or sarcasm.


Stanzas
o All stanzas have 4 lines
Syllables
o Most lines have 6-8 syllables, but three
lines are different
o Two lines have nine syllables:
 “It’s the anarchy of poverty” (1)
 “overwhelmed the entire city” (20)
 Both lines have nine syllables,
connecting the two together with idea
that poverty is uncontrollable chaos
that eventually spread throughout the
city
o One line has five syllables:
 “delights me, the old” (2)
 Connects with the first line to
emphasize the feeling/thoughts of the
speaker on the concept of poverty
SOUND:
Musicality and Auditory
Techniques
Purpose/Effect:
The poem is free verse with no
rhyme in order to portray how
there is no uniform perfection in
society in relation to human
shortcomings of poverty in the
poem. By having pauses in poem
not written in with commas or
period, it coincides with the
stream-of-consciousness style of
the poem and how people really
think when trying to understand
the idea of the poor.
Alliteration is used to emphasize
the importance of the old man’s
role in the poem as a symbol of
time and poverty.
 Free verse
o Entire poem
 Pauses in the poem not written in
with commas or periods
o Ending of poem no period – signify
how there will always remain
problems in society such as poverty
 Alliteration
o Constant use of ”s”
 “in a sweater and soft black/hat
who sweeps the sidewalk” (15-16)
Connection to Other Poetry
by Williams
 Poems with similar ideas: expresses humanity and
its shortcomings
o “The Eyeglasses”
o “The Mind Hesitant”
 Use of imagery and enjambment to carry out what
is trying to be expressed in poem
 Historical context:
o Published in The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlos
Williams, 1906-1938 (1938)
 Around time period of Great Depression and WWII
o Williams lived around small towns with poverty and saw
people struggle
ACTIVITY:
Discussion Questions

What happens to the poem when the opening lines “It’s the anarchy of
poverty/delights me” are removed from the poem? How would it affect
the poem had Williams left it out? Would it change the interpretation
and meaning of the poem?

The speaker in the poem uses the word “delights” to describe poverty.
Do you think it affects the tone or mood of the play? If you were to
change that word, what would it be and why? (Consider how it will
affect the tone of the poem.)

Williams used the lines “in a wind that fitfully/turning his corner
has/overwhelmed the entire city”. What do you think this “wind” is
and what it represents?

In the end of the poem, there is no punctuation at all. Considering the
use of end-stopped throughout the poem, why do you think Williams
did this? Do you think it represents something?
CONCLUSION
Based on how the poem ends, Williams portrays society’s
shortcoming as it tries to hide and ignore what is wrong
in society, which eventually overwhelmed them after time.
Yet, society continues to try to remain in control of the
chaos by defining what they think is necessary for the
poor to thrive compared to what the poor are actually
used to living on what they only know of.