Ulysses
Ulysses - meaning Summary
Prayer and Urban Reality
Brooks contrasts ritualized family piety with the gritty realities of urban life. The poem shows a household that prays together while family members live complicated, sometimes transgressive lives. Children move between school and street, carrying weapons and engaging with peer hierarchies, learning formal lessons but rejecting them. The repeated domestic prayer frames this tension, suggesting faith and love persist amid moral ambiguity and social survival.
Read Complete AnalysesAt home we pray every morning, we get down on our knees in a circle, holding hands, holding Love, and we sing hallelujah. Then we go into the world. Daddy speeds, to break bread with his Girl Friend. Mommy's a Boss. And a lesbian. (She too has a nice Girl Friend.) my brothers and sisters and I come to school. We bring knives pistols bottles, little boxes, and cans. We talk to the man who's cool at the playground gate. Nobody Sees us, nobody stops our sin. Our teachers feed us geography. We spit it out in a hurry. Now we are coming home. At home we pray in the evening get down on our knees in a circle, holding hands, holding Love, And we sing hallelujah...
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