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Analysis of Pinsky's Poems

The Shirt

The shirt by Robert Pinsky symbolizes how shirts are so different just like humans are. "The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams the nearly invisible stitches along the collar." The nearly invisible stitches along the collar can be like the people who are invisible in the world, but thinking of their importance, they support the collar and hold the collar together. Without them the collar would become unraveled and the whole shirt would look disastrous. The shirt was created by a person who was forgotten and Pinsky wants to bring that person back to life. This poem helps people realize that everyone is important no matter what component of the shirt or world that they are in. The man that jumps off the building and wears normal clothes the poem describes him as, "The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters, Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt." This describes how the man wants to get away from the world because what he wears, if its not cool or good enough for the world then people get confused lost and unhopeful. But the shirt was made for a purpose just like a human is. The shirt by Robert Pinsky helps people realize what is behind all of the seams and all of the buttons.

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

The poem, ABC by Robert Pinsky, depicts the real world as it is right now. As the letters, ABC, are in a row and follow a pattern, that’s what life is like too. Anybody can die, evidently, but few can go happily showing their joy to the world. And those few might be the people who don’t always stick to the normal routine, don’t always go where everyone else goes. But there are some who need painkillers, the quickest place to run, whose death might go unnoticed. Those would follow the normal ritual of ABC will never have the chance to actually live. Make mistakes even. People will go along with the normal pattern, in their own sweet time, unafflicted, In various worlds, at various times. The poem merely describes how one must go and live and be themselves while portraying what it would be like if they didn’t and the few that do. The poem expresses that anybody can live, and anybody can die, few can go unafflicted, other in their own time. And whatever planet is on, earth is different, with a widespread of people who follow the same ritual everyday.

X= your zenith how high you can go, but there is a possibility that you can go even further, as people, have we done that?