Hunger in New York City (Poem Summary)

Poem Summary

Lines 1-2

The poem begins with the disturbing image of hunger as a creature that can “crawl into you.” But although it seems to be presented in line 1 as something external, in line 2 we understand that it is actually crawling from somewhere “out of your muscles.” Thus, this hunger is not located in your spirit or your soul, or even your mind. It comes to you through the tension in your muscles.

Lines 3-4

The final two lines of the stanza offer alternatives through the use of the word “or.” In effect, this hunger must come from somewhere before crawling into you out of your own muscles. The images presented are, first, of the “concrete” of the city itself, but perhaps, it is offered, this hunger comes from the thought of the land beneath the “concrete” of the city. Or perhaps it is in the wind forced against you through the “concrete” of the buildings. Your muscles tense against any of these things; this is how the hunger enters you — through your physical response to the city.

Line 5

Once hunger has access to you, and you have identified it, it begins to demand things. The poet personifies hunger in this stanza, giving it the power to ask.

Lines 6-11

At first these demands seem reasonable, and small enough, but then the memories hunger feeds on become more specific. In line 8 the hunger places such emphasis on holding somebody’s hand that it seems to want not just the memory of human contact but human contact itself. And then it wants to go home where the real human contact of the Native-American world can be made through its ritual dances and songs and gods who listen: “the world you know.” In short, in New York City the speaker of this poem is an alien.

Lines 12-17

By creating the desire for “the world you know” hunger “searches you out.” And once it has you, it asks you the kinds of questions family asks. Again, at first these seem simple enough and easy to answer. But in line 15 the simple question calls up the power of hunger expanded full force in line 16. This time hunger takes you further into the world you know than you care to travel: into your own responsibility to that world.

Lines 18-20

The guilt that follows from trying to answer that question pushes the persona of the poem back from his memories and his desire for his home, back into “the concrete of this city.”

The images of the next lines are physically distressing, assaults on human senses, expressed through the adjectives “oily” and “blazing,” and the noun “shrieks.” These images recall, and build on, the poem’s beginning physical images of the muscles in response to the concrete and the wind in lines 3 and 4.

Finally the word “cannot” appears at the end of line 20. While the meaning is not yet fully disclosed, it is clear that there is nothing that the concrete and wind and windows and shrieks can do for the persona.

Lines 21-22

In fact, the repetition of “cannot” with the addition of “truly” speaks with certainty that the city is not the answer to the hunger the speaker has felt inside himself. Indeed the repetition of “cannot,” begun in lines 20-21, takes force in lines 21-22 with the repetition of “hunger.” This creates a chant and invests the lines with the quality of prayer.

Up to this point the persona has been speaking objectively, using the second-person pronoun “you.” This has allowed him to speak about himself, as well as to speak about experiences that a reader might participate in. Finally, however, the persona accepts his experience as belonging completely to himself. “[A]lthough I have hungered” expresses the beginning of this self-knowledge.

Lines 23-24

It is the position of the persona that he has made every possible effort to feed his hunger with things he could find in the city.

Lines 25-32

The speaker begins to feed himself, not his hunger, softly with song in a ritual reminder of the living presence of things that surround him. As a result the almost angry images of the “wind” and “shrieks” in the preceding stanza are understood to be at least as much in him as in the city. His singing calms this angry response to the city and reminds him that the soul of “mother earth,” if not her presence, surrounds him. He concludes the poem, which has become a prayer, with the plea to be blessed by her.

Media Adaptations

• An audio recording titled American Indian Myths and Legends featuring Richard Erdoes, Alfanzo Ortiz, and Jill Momaday was released by Sunset Productions in 1991.
• In 1992 Fulcrum Publishers released an audio recording titled Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories.