Tony Went to the Bodega but He Didn’t Buy Anything (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Martin Espada
- First Published: 1987
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
The Poem
Martín Espada’s poem “Tony Went to the Bodega but He Didn’t Buy Anything” is composed of forty-four lines of free verse. The lines are divided into stanzas of varying lengths, from only four lines in the final stanza to the longest, eleven lines, in stanza 2. The poem describes Tony’s maturation from elementary school to law school. Each verse encapsulates some feature of Tony’s development as he seeks his place in the world.
The opening five lines introduce a fatherless Puerto Rican boy trying to survive the “Long Island city projects.” He...
[The entire page is 1529 words long]
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