Brandon Toomey
Miss Nelson
Poetry Project
5/9/2009
Hunger in New York City
There is a man in New York City where he is hungry in search of food to suppress his hunger. No one wants to help or save him from this hunger. People don’t realize he is in hunger. Sometimes he even sings to himself to suppress the hunger. This is the plot of the poem “Hunger in New York City” by Simon Ortiz. Simon writes this poem to show that people do not need food to fulfill the hunger within them.
He uses metaphors to explain his take on hunger. The poem portrays that people don’t only need food to suppress hunger. It sometimes takes more to get rid of the feeling of hunger. “Hunger crawls into from somewhere out of your muscles, the concrete or the land or even the wind pushing you”. Simon uses this as an illustration from where people get hunger from. He doesn’t exactly know where the hunger is coming from.
Food is not the only thing that can subdue your thought or feeling of hunger. God created people’s surroundings to help them forget about hunger. Simon writes that the man is, “Feeding himself with the humble presence of all around me”. He uses this to describe the man’s feelings of his surroundings. The man likes where he is staying because it is helping him suppress the thought of hunger.
When you first read the title “Hunger in New York City” most people thing that this poem is going to be about physical hunger in New York City but they would be wrong. It has a double meaning to it. In the poem there is talk about where physical hunger comes from but there is also talk about where there is different ways to dispose of hunger. The poem is not only about physical hunger but also about spiritual and emotionally hungry. Simon writes “The man is feeding himself with his soul and mother earth, which makes him cool and humble”. The man feeds his hunger with the people around him and just with mother earth itself. He feeds off of other people’s...