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Engine Empire Poem Analysis

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The linguistics of a poem or novel can sometimes convey meaning better than the actual plot. Cathy Park Hong plays with language awkwardly, lyrically, and even technically, inventing a fascinating twist to her already bold commentary on time, technology, society, and people. Engine Empire is made up of a trilogy of poems that explores the past of the American Gold Rush in the West, the present of an industrialized Chinese city, and the future of a technological advanced society. The first section follows “we,” a young boy, Jim, and the group he is forced to join that is exploring the West for treasure. As the section progresses, glimpses of the young boy’s corruption and transformation are shown through specific vowel ballads. In all three poems, “Ballad in O,” “Ballad in …show more content…

The capitalized vowel “I” holds the notion of self and person. This voice of I breaks the silence of Jim as he is usually referred to as a part of the group. The gang is obviously quite violent as they like “picking fights” and “swinging fists,” making Jim more violent in nature. Jim finally sings, “I’m tiring,” for he is aware of his corruption but cannot help his new material driven lifestyle. Where at first Jim is singing and there seems to be a sense of excitement from the rowdy nature of the gang, Jim’s “grim” starts “wilting” and he is “sighing” in this “sinking light” at the end of the poem. Not only does Hong use careful word choice to depict sorrow overcoming Jim, but the vowel itself in the words towards the end of the poem become elongated and slow instead of the short and rhythmic vowel usage in words at the start. Furthermore it is obvious that the language in this poem as well as the other two restricted Hong, as she could only use words that contained the specific vowels in that piece. This notion of restriction refers further to Jim’s constrained

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