Hunger in New York City (Style)

Style

“Hunger in New York City” is a poem in five stanzas, ranging from the four-line first stanza to the eight-line final stanza. There is quite a variation in line length, from the closing line of two words, to the longest line (7), with nine words. Thus, the poem does not follow any traditional form or consistent layout. Instead, it is the story that is being told that seems to shape the poem. In the first stanza, “hunger” is introduced as an external force. The second explores the reasons for this relationship with hunger. Hunger in the third stanza becomes nagging, asking pointed questions, merging itself with guilt. The fourth stanza explains why the questions hunger asks cannot find answers in the city. The final stanza presents a response to hunger, if not the answers to its questions.

Structurally, the first lines of each stanza signal the stages of development of the story. Stanza 1: Initially, “Hunger crawls into you” in a particular way. Stanza 2: Once inside, it “comes to you, asking ” for things. Stanza 3: “That is” indicates a digression in which the storyteller-poet presents an explanation of “asking” that ultimately results in specific questions. Stanza 4: The conjunction “And” provides a connection of the story with “the city.” Stanza 5: The adverb “So” signals the conclusion of the story.

The speaker initally directs the story in the poem to the reader, but also allows it to spring from his own personal experience. This is achieved by his use of the second-person pronoun “you.” At the end of fourth stanza, however, the “you” shifts to the first-person “I” as the persona places himself fully in his experience of “hunger.”