Walking Home at Night
Walking Home at Night - meaning Summary
Urban Alienation at Night
A brief, nocturnal scene of urban alienation and self-recognition. The speaker walks home and encounters a looming Port Authority building and a cast of exhausted, shrouded figures whose aimless, failing lives mirror his own. The poem compresses landscape and memory into a moment of private horror and empathy, ending with a visceral, self-directed exclamation that acknowledges shared squalor and personal despair.
Read Complete AnalysesWalking home at night reaching my own block I saw the Port Authority Building hovering over the old ghetto side of the street I tenement in company with obscure Bartlebys and Judes, cadaverous men, shrouded men, soft white eshed failures creeping in and out of rooms like myself. Remembering my attic, I reached my hands to my head and hissed, “Oh, God how horrible!”
New York, December 1951
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