Gwendolyn Brooks' poem, "The Lovers of the Poor" is a fairly heavyhanded attack on the middle-aged rich women she sees as being condescending in attempting to do charity work in the slums. One possible thesis would be to look at the reality that this demographic is responsible for a very large percentage of all charitable contributions of money and time in the developed world. Would Brooks prefer that the women in this poem forget charity and spend all their money on clothes and jewellery? In what way does her resentment make this poem somewhat weaker than her treatments of the inner city children with whom she sympathizes more?