Dump Poem

“How Things Work” and “Dump” The poems “Dump” and “How Things Work” are similar and different in many ways. The form is the poem’s structure and the way its words and lines are arranged. For example, the poem “Dump” is a traditional or fixed poem and the poem “How Things Work” is free verse. The theme of the poem is a lesson about life or human nature the poet shares with the reader. The tone is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject. The meter in a poem is the stressed and unstressed syllables. The poems “Dump” and “How Things Work” are similar. They are similar because the last two line in both poems show that the theme or message is that life keeps going. This is the theme of the poem because in the poem “Dump,” the author stated,

The tone of the “Dump” is that it is sad and disgusting. In the text, the author stated, “We stumble on homecanned pears grown poisonous in their jar…” This shows that at the dump, there are things people throw away and it is never cleaned. Since the dump is never cleaned, this shows that the dump is not the best place to go. Another example is, and nearly gash an ankle against a shard of glass.” This shows that the dump is dangerous because their are pieces of glass on the floor. Since there are glass on the floor, this shows that it is not a place for children to go. In addition, the meter in the poem “Dump” is that it follows a stressed and unstressed syllable. In the poem “Dump,” the author stated, “The brink over which we pour odd items we can’t find enough cubic inches to store in house, in mind,...” The unstressed and stressed syllables works by following a rhythm duh-DAH. The form of the poem “Dump” is fixed or traditional. It is fixed or traditional because it is separated into eight stanzas with four lines. Another reason why the poem is a fixed or traditional is because it has a rhyme scheme of an abab pattern. For example, in the text, the author stated, “The brink over which we pour odd items we can’t find enough cubic inches to store in house, in mind,..” The abab pattern in this stanza is pour rhymes with store and find rhymes with mind. The theme of this poem is that we consume things as well as throw

The poem’s tone is that it is joyful. The tone of the poem is that it is joyful because in the poem, the author stated, “The tip I left for the waitress filters down like rain, wetting the new roots of a child.” This shows that a tip could help a person in need to buy things needed. The poet sounds like he is happy because the money he left helped other people. Another example is, in the poem, the author stated, “A tip, a small purchase here and there, and things just keep going, I guess.” This shows that a small amount helped many people so this led to other people helping others, so it starts all over again. Moreover, the form of the poem is that it is a free verse poem. Free verse poems are poems that have natural rhythms. The poem “How Things Work,” is a free verse because it has no stanzas and has nineteen lines. The theme of the poem is that life depends on money. For example, in the poem, the author stated, “Today it’s going to cost us twenty dollars To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book, A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,...” This shows that the things he listed costs money, and if you don’t have the money, then you won’t get the things