“You Who Wrangle With Me at the Mart”
The lead character of the poem titled “You Who Wrangle With Me at the Mart” is never named and never could be. The “you” is figurative and literally plural; it is directed toward an individual, but it encompasses the whole of human experience. The poem is a plea for understanding, empathy and decency in the name of discourse.
The Daughter, “I Knew a Daughter”
Decency seems to be a pretty consistent theme running throughout the verse of the poet. Or, rather, the plaintive desire to see a world more concerned with decency. The daughter which is described here was the baby of a big brood; a brood that did worked ceaselessly to provide her with every advantage. Her payment for this sacrifice is to seek nothing but pleasure and live an idle standing stark comparison to the life of toil put in by her siblings and parents.
“The Dead Wife”
The speaker of this poem is the widowed husband. The wife has been dead for some time and the verse moves inexorably to the fear which threatens to overwhelm the grief: that he has already begun to forget what she looked like and may not recognize her at all in the afterlife.
The Patient, “In the Hospital”
The patient seems to be a version of the poet himself. The hospital is structured more along the lines of a prison; the keynote emotion is the desire to escape its isolation and return to the normalcy of the outside world. At one point, it seems that the speaker has done just this as he speaks of being free, walking with friends and enjoying the music of the busy town. But he is brought almost immediately back to the world inside the hospital by the nurse with the admonition that writing is not conducive to his recuperation.
