Portrait
TO write one book in five years or five books in one year, to be the painter and the thing painted, ... where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here and the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, and the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps under bridges with lonely crazy men; he sits in country jails with bootleggers; he adopts the children of broken-down burlesque actresses; he has cried a heart of tears for Windy MacPherson's father; he pencils wrists of lonely women. Can a man sit at a desk in a skyscraper in Chicago and be a harnessmaker in a corn town in Iowa and feel the tall grass coming up in June and the ache of the cottonwood trees singing with the prairie wind?
For S. A.Portrait - meaning Summary
A Life of Many Faces
The poem questions what makes a person's identity when life is lived across many roles and places. The speaker lists outward markers—clothes, barbershop—and inner experiences: sleeping under bridges, sitting in jails, adopting abandoned children, feeling grief. It contrasts urban occupations with rural sensations to argue that a single person can embody disparate lives, empathy, and restlessness rather than a fixed, single portrait.
Read Complete Analyses
Feel free to be first to leave comment.