Like Walking to the Drug Store, When I Get Out (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Joyce Carol Oates
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Epistle/letter in verse
- Genres: Poetry, Epistolary literature
- Subjects: Prisoners, Prisons, Murder or homicide, Violence, Letter writing, Letters
The Poem
“Like Walking to the Drug Store, When I Get Out” is a letter in free verse with eight stanzas and a short, cryptic “PS.” The title of the poem is also the final line in stanza 6 and is a statement of the utter nonchalance with which the writer of the “letter” regards his impulse to violence, even murder. Although initially a confusing phrase, the title becomes a nugget of clarity when it appears within the poem. The speaker is a prison inmate, a convicted child molester, who writes a letter to the “famous” author Joyce Carol Oates, threatening her...
[The entire page is 1431 words long]
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