Summary Of Two Hangover By James Arlington Wright

Hangovers Explication The poem Two Hangovers was written by American poet James Arlington Wright in 1963, who was often noticed as one of America’s finest contemporary poets. Wright was born in 1927, and the poem takes us through the experience of two hangovers. The first hangover is the most painful and dark, while the second hangover is much less painful and brighter. While the beginning of a hangover is almost unbearable, the end of a hangover isn’t as awful. We can tell the hangovers differ immensely by the tone of the two parts of the poem. The first hangover tells of graveyards and wright even feels so bad that he also already has a grave site, which isn’t a very joyful thought. The second hangover describes how much fun a blue jay is having, and Wright is enjoying the sight of the joy the bird is experiencing.

“Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women sorting slate from anthracite” seems as if wright is telling us of these women that are alone and working by themselves in the coal mining industry. Wright is in a very dark and gloomy state of mind during the first hangover he has. “The yellow bearded winter of the depression is still alive somewhere, an old man counting his collection of bottle caps in a tarpaper shack under the cold trees of my grave” explains that Wright can see that he is not alone in his depressive state as he watches an old man count bottle caps under a shack that stands under the trees over Wright’s grave. It’s as if Wright is saying that at the moment, he and the old man are feeling quite the same; they don’t have much to look forward