With the poems within “The Inner-City Mother Goose” Eve Merriam explained and emphasized on these different styles of writing in their poems. Many of these are controversial, in a way they go deeper into the meaning of black and brown neighborhoods. Eve Merriam was able bring these two worlds together and make this book which is full of poems with messaged about the inner cities and the corruption within. She explains how city planners, politicians, government bureaucrats, and the “crisis committees” claim that they help the poor but, do nothing for them. In her first poem you see that straight off the bat she fires warning shots across the bow, of course to a nation who don’t care for helping the inner-city crisis. She takes us though 65 verses in all, showing her audience and readers a street-level tour of real life in the American “inner-city.”
Boys and girls come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day.
Leave your supper and leave your sleep,
And join your playfellows in the street.
Come with a whoop and come with a call:
Up, motherfuckers, against the wall.
Eve Merriam. “The Inner-City Mother Goose” CITYLAB, March 30, 2017. Accessed May 29, 2019.
This shows a unique style in its genre, as well as just how everything is laid` out throughout the book, because as you read the poem, through that one direct, brutal profanity, that is the only actual swear in the entire book. Eve Merriam wanted to show her emotions, a raw emotion right off the bat to catch a reader’s attention. She is able through her first poem get into the readers head as she did with me. It can exhibit that theme because its talking about the theme which I chose to do, and Eve Merriam does a good job going deeper and having no boundaries about the inner-city life.