"The Concrete River"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Luis Rodriguez?s poem, "The Concrete River", is his communication of his experience of the concrete, urban habitat. It looks at how, just like the 1960s and 1970s poets described the city as a concrete jungle, Rodriguez picks a metaphor familiar to his heritage and describes the city as the surrogate substitution of what would bring life to him if he lived somewhere else. It evaluates how Luis?s description of the meaningless of urban life for a poor Latino could not be more vivid.

From the Paper:

"The poet begins by building the parameters of his life. The world is covered with dust, and even the attempt to relax under the shade tree cannot help him escape form the reality of dying - death. The trees too are having the life strangled out of them by ivy. Yet he is with his friends, homeboys, and they are living for, and bowing down to the only hope they have. Spray paint can fumes are the subject of their homage. They have long since stopped looking for meaning in the concrete world around them, and now bow to the hallucinogenic prosperities of aerosol propellant."

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