Poetry vs. Photography
...s Southside are a perfect example of how a photographer can convey the feeling and experiences of a culture fighting for survival. The views of street peddlers struggling to make ends meet to feed themselves and their families through selling rabbits, wood, and other merchant goods through the back of truck beds, wagons, or any other means of improvisation. A photograph is only a visual story and only a limited amount of content is available but, through that lens depicted very well the desperate measures and circumstances that a minority culture had the struggle through to fight and climb out of depression, prejudice and social injustices. Poetry unlike photographs have no visual aid to represent what the artist is trying to convey, but must rely upon its choice and phrasing of words. In a poem careful consideration must be taken when choosing certain phrases to represent feeling and emotions. Each line in a poem is meant for a specific reason, their are no unnecessary lines. The poems by Gwendolyn Brooks conveyed the feelings of those hardships in 40’s Chicago very well. Rather than see the image the poet allows you to create the image for yourself, which in turn produces a connection between the poem and reader. This connection is one of the links between photographs and poetry. The principal reason for such poems is to create a question in the reader’s mind of what the poet is trying to express. That question is answered by not just a visual image in the readers mind, but with scenes and feelings of all aspects of the poems story. The tight confined spaces of a kitchenette Building’s rooms, the hardships of raising a family in a single room with no personal space. “And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall” (Brooks) “The first part of A Street in Bronzeville provides a realistic depiction of the area and its residents,” (Thompson and Gale) which allows just a enough for the reader to create a visual image of what reality in Chicago’s Southside was like. It is that infectious curiosity, created by the poet and the photographer that is the important key to the similarities between the two. While both media forms have limited amounts of content to project their message, they both must use their ability to influence the reader to expand and elaborate on the content to interpret a picture and story. In Gwendolyn Brook’s “Kitchenett...