On A Visit Home Spiro Analysis
Filled with macabre tales of marginalized areas of the urban jungle, the poem On a Visit Home by Peter Spiro acquaints the reader with the impoverished world of slums and the violent, dire and hopeless reality of living in those.
The poem is constructed as a continuous monologue consisting of 46 verse lines, with the speaker recalling the memorable, although gruesome events from his youth as he takes a literal stroll down memory lane, wandering around the streets in which he grew up, as already revealed in the title. The homogeneity of the one-stanza structure of the poem is counterbalanced by the generous use of enjambment. This creates tension which persists throughout the poem, as the anecdotes told by the speaker do not reach their resolution
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The speaker admits to have dropped out of high school, which along with the gruesome fates of the other children indicates that the area is not only characterized by low social mobility, but also low cultural capital. It is therefore likely that the central theme in the poem is urban reality and its consequences, rather than death or violence per se. The aforesaid themes are likewise present in Peter Spiro’s other work, namely the poem “We All Need”, which appears to be the precedent to “On a Visit Home”, as indicated by the explanation of how Poochie was “torched for the first time” , an event mentioned in the latter poem. Likewise, “We All Need” deals with the themes of poverty and life in slums, as well as provides further insight into the violence, illicit substance use and crime that these entail. However, the main theme of this poem is social mobility, the bridge being the central symbol for that, as each character attempts to cross the bridge and leave the slum from which they come from. Unfortunately, their efforts are to no avail, and they find themselves going “back to the block” . The poem is concluded with the words “we all need to build our own goddamn bridges”, the speaker admitting that the prospect of crossing the figurative bridge is out of their reach, thus forcing them to create their own paths, the crossing of which is more
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