City Eclogue part 2 response

In the second half of City Eclogue, the first poem I read was Open. I believe that this poem is about the housing segregation that was going on before and during the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes, if there were areas that Caucasians did not want to live in and the government did not want African Americans to live in, they would tear down the houses. The narrator of Open was speaking on the fact that before the houses were torn down, the area seemed to be full of life and that it used to be very tight living quarters. But now that the houses along with the other people are gone, all he sees is an open sadness as generations of families have disappeared.

The next poem that I found interesting was Simple As One Two. It was a lot easier for me to understand unlike most of the other poems in this book. I like the fact that he asks why should someone have to play sick from work just to get some time to himself ? Why is our society so obsessed with money that we are willing to work ourselves to death and why is taking a day off just because you need it a crime? There should be no reason why you have too act sick just to get a day off from work every now and then. And even when you play sick from work, you cannot go anywhere because you cannot take the risk of being seen by any coworkers. The speaker states that even the dumbest of animals knows when self preservation is needed. I think he is saying that humans do not know this limit.

Overall, the City Eclogue is a very good book. There were a lot of poems that confused me and were hard to read. However, it was very interesting to see a different view of the city life other than mine. As a person that has lived in a city in which there are abandoned buildings and was part of the Civil Rights Movement, I never really saw the poetic side of all the damage and neglect I see. I normally see the problems as something to either get away from or fix. If anything this book has taught me to not always look at the negative but the positive as well.