Hunger in New York City (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Many literary and cultural critics value the work of Ortiz because they feel it serves as a representation of Native-American culture. These scholars feel that the work of Native Americans and other cultural minorities has been underrepresented in American society and the prominence of poets like Ortiz helps to correct this situation.

There are other critics who prize the work of Native-American writers as the true voice of America. These scholars argue that the literature of tribal peoples is more authentic to the spirit of the Americas than are works produced by individuals of non-native ancestry, such as European settlers and their descendants. According to Willard Gingerich, however, this is a mistake. He argues that the “American sensibility” belongs to a wide variety of writers including those of both European and Native-American ancestry. While Gingerich concedes that there is a current literary vogue for minority writers, he also acknowledges that, for writers like Ortiz, the struggle to achieve a position in the American literary tradition has created tremendous vitality in their work. The critic notes that being poor or oppressed or speaking Spanish does not ensure good poetry, but that “the felt distance [minority writers] travel to arrive at full sensibility of themselves and their contexts is greater [than that of non-minorities] and generates therefore a finer tension of meaning, phrase, and allusion in their writing.”

While Harold Jaffe praises Ortiz as among “the strongest” of current American Indian writers, including N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, he maintains that “their writings are frequently more problematic than those of their forbears.” He notes the poetry of Ortiz, particularly, as having “apparently simple, yet elusive, syntax” which at times “seems fractionally off, as if the English were adapted from another language.”

Gingerich, who says that Ortiz is an “Indian” poet in the same way as Gerard Manley Hopkins is a “Catholic” poet, seems content to accept the poet’s unusual use of language. He maintains that while the images a writer brings to the literary tradition may be specific to a cultural or ethnic tradition, it is “the spirit of the language itself” that enlivens these values. Because of this, the critic feels that a reader of Ortiz’s poetry understands something about life itself, and not only something about Native – American life.

Geary Hobson insists that Ortiz’s work needs to be read for “his contribution as a remarkably incisive critic of contemporary society, both in the Indian as well as the non-Indian world.” Hobson feels that this critical ability is acutely expressed in “Hunger In New York City,” a poem that speaks eloquently of “felt distance” in its characterization of hunger as symbol of the relationship between the individual and the city.

“ Ortiz opts for a direct, unadorned style that has more in common with speech than writing.”