Blackberries Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa is telling a very compelling tale of the social issues that children face growing up in poverty. In his poem Blackberries he explains how poverty affects children and their reactions when confronted by wealth. At the beginning of his poem with the words “They left my hands like a printer’s or thief’s before a police blotter and pulled me into early mornings” these few lines set up his entire poem, paving the way for us to believe that the poem we are about to read is full of song like words and whimsical words. But in between his stanzas lies the subconscious reminder that his poem is not just a few words that are laced together to make pretty verse. But a story of a child facing the struggles of everyday life while living life in destitution.
Komunakaa shows us just how vast and contrasting the unbridged gap between upper class and middle class really is. Throughout history there is a reoccurring factor where the social classes are separated based on their status in society, poppers and servants in England being separated from the hierarchy; and slaves being kept away from upper class. In the poem Blackberries middle or lower class are being kept from the upper class due to boundaries and what is and is not socially acceptable. Separation of ethnicity, class, wealth, clothing, …show more content…
Yusef Komunakaa shows us how young people start to put up boundaries in this single phrase “When I leaned in close I saw a boy and girl my age in the wide back seat smirking” he shows us that at such an early age these two children already have no respect for someone who is the same age as them but was born into a different way of life than they were. Boundaries cause pain, and children are no more indifferent to the sting of criticism and up turned noses than adults are. It has become a severe problem that shows how savagely history seems to repeat