Gwendolyn Brooks employs subtle usage of figurative language in her poem The Lovers of the Poor to create a contrast between the ladies and the poor people. This contrast justifies the ladies’ avoidance of the home by using alliteration, imagery, and diction to sophisticate them and minimize the poor people’s suffering.
Brooks’s most subtle method of creating this contrast is revealed in the sound of the poem. Through heavy use of alliteration, she creates an audible difference in the descriptions of the two groups. The ladies are described with soft consonants in phrases liked “fit, fiftyish” and “fat fruit”. By contrast, the description of the poor uses harder consonants like “beggar-bold” and “battle’s bald”. This subtle difference adds
