Compare the two poems Two scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in a Mercedes by Laurence Ferlinghetti and Island man by Grace Nichols.

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Shayss Qureshi 10F

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In this essay I will compare the two poems “Two scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in a Mercedes” by Laurence Ferlinghetti and “Island man” by Grace Nichols.

In this piece of writing I will compare shape, poetic devices and generally what the two poems are about.

        The poem “two scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in Mercedes” is about a coincidence meeting of two working class people – “scavengers” and a “beautiful” rich couple in a Mercedes. This poem was set in America and was made to present that there is deference between the two sets of people, the rich and the poor.

        On the other hand Grace Nichols shows the difficulty for an immigrant to have to leave their homeland in the Caribbean and come to settle in to the urban environments of London. The poem includes the ‘island man’ waking up in London but dreaming of waking up in his home country. The poem gives us a picture of two different worlds and is based on dreams and reality.

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        Both poems use shape to their advantage. In the poem “Two scavengers…” the author writes a poem not in stanzas but in 5 simple sections. Ferlinghetti presents both characters alternatively, using one of the sections to describe the bin men and the next for the rich couple. The reason the author did this was to show the inequality between the two sets of people.

        Both poets structure their poems to form a shape accordingly to their issue. In ‘Island man’ Nichols form the poem using mainly short line and a few long lines. I think that he did this because ...

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