Poetry Response 03

The Street

Stephen Dobyns

Dobyns's poem is wonderful in that it gives the reader a sort of inside look into the characters that are in the painting. Each stanza is detailed and paints a description for each subject in The Street. When I read the poem first and then looked at the painting I felt that the poem had really made the image more interesting, and even more lively, because the poem had given a sort of backstory to each character. When it gets to the end of the poem however the poem moves away from the characters and gives a sort of somber message with it's last couple of stanzas about how each character "circles" one another and ends up alone. I thought it was an abrupt change in the poem's mood but then I really looked at the painting and it actually looks like each subject in it is just sort of placed into the setting with no connection to each other and they just don't seem to "fit" if that makes any sense. It's also interesting to note that the way Dobyns describes each subject in the painting that are in his poem may just be his personal reflections on them and not what they may actually be like. Maybe Dobyns had seen the painting first and then really put some thought into what he thought the subjects were like before he wrote his poem?