Shapiro's "The Dirty Word"

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the theme of the poem, "The Dirty Word," and the different literary techniques that can be seen throughout the poem. Examples of Shapiro's use of metaphor, analogy, and symbolism are provided and their meaning explained. The paper also draws a comparison between the power and significance of words within the poem and the significance placed on words in Jewish theological tradition.

From the Paper:

"Karl Shapiro's poem, "The Dirty Word" compares a young boy hearing a dirty word to a young boy keeping a vulture. The vulture acts as a metaphor, and the way it interacts with the boy offers examples of the way that hearing a dirty word might affect a young child's mind and how a young boy might both delight in the pleasure of a using a forbidden word and transgressing boundaries even as he is ultimately ashamed and repulsed by the dirty word's offensiveness. Equally important in the poem is the theme of death not only is the dirty word compared to a carrion-eating vulture, but the boy's funeral is described, and the narrator also claims to have murdered the dirty word in his own mind. The poem then, reveals itself to be an elegy, but the exact kind of elegy is not clear until the poem's final lines. In the final lines of the poem, the speaker reveals that his story about the boy and the dirty word was in fact autobiography and that his poem is an elegy for himself?an elegy for the death of the innocent and youthful child that the speaker once was."

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